2007 – An OH-58D Kiowa makes a hard landing south of Kirkuk, injuring both crewmembers, and becomes entangled in overhanging wires before hitting the ground.[8] Reports had varied whether the crash was due to a mechanical[9] or electronic failure[10] and whether it is shot down.[11]

1999 – (1-20) The hot-air balloon Breitling Orbiter 3, with pilots Bertrand Piccard and Brian Jones, begins the first non-stop, round-the-world balloon flight. They will complete the flight on March 19, setting a new distance record for any type of aircraft of 40,804 km (25,360 miles). Taking a total time of 19 days, 21 hours and 47 min.

1989 – Canadian Space Agency (CSA) was formed, taking over the National Research Council as Canada’s primary space agency. In 1993, the CSA established its headquarters in St. Hubert, Quebec.

1976 – Lt. Col. Michael A. Love, 37, chief USAF test pilot on the Martin-Marietta X-24B program, is killed in the crash of an F-4C Phantom II on a dry lakebed at Edwards AFB, California, after take-off on a proficiency flight when his ejection seat malfunctions. Navigator Maj. E. B. Underwood, Jr. ejects before the crash and is hospitalized in stable condition. After serving in the lifting body program as chase pilot on various Northrop M2 and X-24A flights, Love made his first X-24B flight on 4 October 1973, and piloted the plane to its fastest speed—better than 1,860 kph—before terminating the program with a hard-surface runway landing at Edwards on 20 August 1975.

1969 – The U. S. Army’s 101st Airborne Division (Airmobile) begins Operation Massachusetts Striker, a helicopter-borne assault against North Vietnamese forces in South Vietnam’s A Shau Valley. It will continue until May 8

1966 – Venera 3 Soviet space probe crashes on Venus becoming the first spacecraft to land on another planet’s surface.

1965 – The combat debut of the Republic F-105 Thunderchief takes place, as U. S. Air Force F-105D aircraft based at Da Nang, South Vietnam, begin bombing missions over North Vietnam.

1962 – American Airlines Flight 1, a Boeing 707, crashes in Jamaica Bay, Queens, New York due to a rudder malfunction, killing all 95 passengers and crew on board.

1962 – Los Angeles Airways sets up the world’s first commercial service using turbine-powered, multi-engine helicopters, the Sikorsky S-621L, which could accommodate up to 28 passengers.

1946 – Two Silverplate Boeing B-29 Superfortresses written off in taxi accident at Kirtland Army Air Field, New Mexico. Pilot of Boeing B-29-60-MO Superfortress, 44-86473, of the 509th Composite Group, assigned to Roswell AAF, New Mexico, attempts to taxi without energizing the hydraulic brake system, cannot stop bomber which collides with Boeing B-29-36-MO, 44-27296, "Some Punkins", also of the 509th. "Some Punkins" stricken in August 1946 and destroyed in fire-fighting training. 44-86473 dropped from inventory, April 1946, after salvage.

1945 – First vertical take-off manned rocket flight test, launched from the Lager Heuberg military training area near Stetten am kalten Markt, of Bachem Ba 349 Natter, 'M23', a vertically launched bomber interceptor, fails when Oberleutnant Lothar Sieber, 22, a volunteer, is killed as rocket-powered aircraft reaches ~1,650 feet, cockpit canopy detaches, Ba 349 noses over onto back, then falls from ~4,800 feet, killing pilot. No cause for crash determined but it was thought that improperly latched canopy may have knocked Siebert unconscious. Three successful manned flights subsequently flown and a group of the fighters readied for intercept mission, but advancing U.S. 8th Army armoured units overrun launch site before Natters can be used

1945 – Two Bell P-59A Airacomets of the 29th Fighter Squadron collide in mid-air over the Grey Butte Army Airfield during an anti-aircraft tracking exercise. 2nd Lt. Robert W. Murdock (pilot of #44-22620), and 2nd Lt. Howard L. Wilson (pilot of #44-22626) are killed in the collision.

1943 – Since January 14, Royal Air Force Bomber Command has launched major raids on Wilhelmshaven four times, Berlin, Cologne, and Hamburg three times each, and Bremen, Düsseldorf, and Nuremberg once each, as well as on Milan and Turin.

1943 – (Overnight) Royal Air Force Bomber Command flies the last raid of its early 1943 campaign against German submarines and their bases in France. It has attacked Lorient nine times and Brest once since the start of the campaign on January 14, but found German submarine pens impervious to its bombs. The raids have caused much damage to the French cities and their residents.

1942 – The U. S. Navy sinks a German submarine for the first time in World War II when a Patrol Squadron 82 (VP-82) PBO-1 Hudson piloted by Ensign William Tepuni USNR sinks U-656 off Cape Race, Newfoundland.

1939 – Clarence Decatur C. D. Howe opened the first TransCanada Air Lines transcontinental passenger service from Montreal to Vancouver.

1938 – Western Air Command with Headquarters at Vancouver, BC, was formed to control all RCAF units in British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba.

1938 – The 1938 Yosemite TWA crash; a Douglas DC-2, disappears on a flight from San Francisco to Winslow, Arizona; the aircraft is found three months later on a mountain in Yosemite National Park; all 9 on board die.

1933 – U. S. Air Commerce Regulations are amended to increase the flying time required for a pilot’s license from 10 hours to 50 hours.

1932 – Entered Service: Berliner-Joyce P-16 with United States Army Air Corps

1932 – The 20-months-old son of aviator Charles Lindbergh has been kidnapped from the family’s home in Hopewell, New Jersey.

1928 – The British aircraft carrier HMS Courgaeous enters service as the world’s first aircraft carrier with transverse arresting gear.

1928 – An airmail route between France and Chile is opened with a fast sea link between Dakar, Senegal and Natal, Brazil.

1924 – Deke Slayton, American astronaut, was born (d. 1993). was one of the original “Mercury Seven” NASA astronauts. Initially grounded by a heart condition, he would serve as NASA’s Director of Flight Crew Operations. Deke Slayton was responsible for all crew assignments at NASA from November 1963 until March 1972, when he was granted medical clearance to fly as docking module pilot of the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project. At the time of the flight, he became the oldest person to fly into space.

1912 – Capt. Albert Berry makes the first parachute descent from a powered airplane in America when he jumps from a Benoist aircraft that is being flown by the company pilot, Anthony Jannus. The aircraft is flying at a height of 1,500 ft. over Jefferson Barracks in St. Louis, Missouri, and Berry uses a static line parachute.

1911 – The first four Royal Navy pilots, Lieutenants Charles R. Samson, R. Gregory, and Arthur M. Longmore of the Royal Navy and Lieutenant E. L. Gerrard of the Royal Marine Light Infantry, report for flight training at Eastchurch airfield, using borrowed Short S.27 aircraft.

2011 – The Libyan opposition‍ '​s interim-government council formally requests that the United Nations impose a no-fly zone over Libya and conduct precision air strikes against Libyan government forces,[5] and the Arab League states that a no-fly zone is necessary and adds that in cooperation with the African Union, it could impose a militarily-enforced no-fly zone without the United Nation‍ '​s backing.[6]

2010 – An Republic of Korea Air Force Northrop F-5E and Northrop F-5F crashed into Mount Hwangbyeong, about 20 kilometers (12 mi) west of the city of Gangneung, Gangwon. The pilot of the F-5E and the two pilots of the F-5F were killed.

2002 – A Grumman F-14B-145-GR Tomcat, BuNo 162923, of VF-143, 'AG', from the carrier USS John F. Kennedy crashes into the Mediterranean near the Greek island of Crete, killing its pilot. Aircraft was launching from the carrier when the nose gear disintegrated - both crew eject but the pilot was outside the envelope and was killed.

1998 – Data sent from the Galileo spacecraft indicates that Jupiter’s moon Europa has a liquid ocean under a thick crust of ice.

1986 – The United States Navy disbands United States Naval Reserve Light Photographic Reconnaissance Squadron 206 (VFP-206), its last squadron equipped with specialized photographic reconnaissance aircraft and the last equipped with any version of the Vought F-8 Crusader.

1951 – U. S. Navy AD Skyraiders of Attack Squadron 195 (VA-195) from the aircraft carrier USS Princeton (CV-37) begin a lengthy series of raids against a railroad bridge across a deep ravine south of Kilchu, Korea. By the time the raids end in early April, the bridge will have been destroyed and enemy attempts to repair it will have been defeated.

1949 – Two USMC Reserve Grumman F6F-5N Hellcats, BuNo. 94202, c/n A-11954, 'WF 9', and BuNo. 94182, 'WF 14', out of MCAS El Toro, crash into the 9,500 foot level of the south slope of Mt. Baldy, in Southern California. Wreckage discovered on 6 March.[179] Also this date, Vought F4U-4B Corsair, BuNo 97448,[180] 'AB 16', is reported missing since 1430 hrs., last reporting in that it was near Santa Cruz Island. Its wreckage and the body of its dead pilot are found on the island on 5 March.

1949 – Commanded by Capt. James G. Gallagher, the crew of 14 aboard the Strategic Air Command B-5 A Lucky Lady II of the Forty-third Bombardment Group, USAF, completes the first nonstop round-the-world flight of 94 hours 1 min. Flying a distance of 23,452 miles the B-50 A is refueled four times by KB-29 tankers before landing back at Carswell AFB, Texas. 1944 – The Allied air forces make their largest attacks of the Anzio campaign, with 241 B-24 Liberators and 100 B-17 Flying Fortresses escorted by 113 P-38 Lightnings and 63 P-47 Thunderbolts dropping thousands of fragmentation bombs around Castello di Cisterna, Velletri, and Carroceto, Italy. Almost the same number of Allied medium and light bombers and fighter-bombers strike German tanks, artillery positions, and assembly areas around the Anzio beachhead, especially along the Castello di Cisterna-Campoleone highway.

1943 – In the Battle of the Bismarck Sea, U. S. Army Air Forces and Royal Australian Air Force aircraft attack a convoy of eight Japanese cargo ships escorted by eight destroyers carrying troops from Rabaul, New Britain, to Lae, New Guinea, as it transits an unnamed body of water soon to be named the Bismarck Sea. For the loss of five aircraft, they sink all eight cargo ships and four of the destroyers, damage the other four destroyers, and shoot down 20 to 30 Japanese fighters attempting to provide air defense. About 3,000 Japanese troops are killed.

1940 – The United Kingdom and France promise to send 100 bombers with crews and bombs to assist Finland at once, but do not follow through on the promise.

2010 – A US Coast Guard Sikorsky MH-60T, an upgraded Sikorsky HH-60 Jayhawk helicopter crashed in the remote Utah mountains. It was one of two traveling through the area en route to its home base in Elizabeth City, North Carolina, after performing security duty at the Vancouver Winter Olympic Games. The helicopters made a refueling stop in Salt Lake City and were headed to Leadville, Colorado, when the crash occurred about 50 miles (80 km) east of Salt Lake City. Three crewmen were airlifted to local hospitals and two others sustained minor injuries.

2010 – An Republic of Korea Army MD Helicopters MD 500 helicopter crashed 20 km east of the capital Seoul, at around 2014 hrs. Helicopter hit a greenhouse in a rice paddy in Namyangju. The two crew members were rushed to a hospital but were later confirmed dead.

2010 – An Azerbaijan Air Force Sukhoi Su-25 close air support aircraft crashed in the Shamkir district in northwest Azerbaijan at around 1700 hrs. local time, killing the pilot.

2010 – An Indian Navy HAL Kiran crashed into building in Hyderabad during the air show/exhibition "India Aviation 2010". Both pilots and a civilian on the ground were killed. At least 5 other civilians also received injuries.

2008 – An Iraqi Air Force Mil Mi-17 helicopter crashes in a dust storm near Bayji, Iraq, killing seven members of the IAF, as well as SSgt. Christopher S. Frost, 24, of Waukesha, Wisconsin, a USAF public affairs specialist who deployed to the Multinational Security Transition Command-Iraq from the 377th Air Base Wing at Kirtland AFB, New Mexico.

2005 – A Westland Lynx mk.8 (Royal Navy) crashes during Gulf exercise. The three crew members survived. The Lynx is currently deployed to HMS Nottingham.[1]

2005 – The late Steve Fossett becomes the first person to fly an airplane around the world solo nonstop without refueling, flying 25,000 miles in 67 hours and 2 min.

2001 – An explosion in the center wing fuel tank destroys Thai Airways International Flight 114, a Boeing 737-4D7, on the ground while it is preboarding at Don Mueang Airport in Bangkok, Thailand. One person, a flight attendant is killed.

2001 – A United States National Guard Short C-23B+ Sherpa (Shorts 360), 93-1336, of Florida Army National Guard Det. 1 H/171st AVN, based at Lakeland Linder Regional Airport, crashes during heavy rainstorm around 1100 hrs. in Unadilla, Georgia in the United States. All 21 people on board are killed. Aircraft was en route from Hurlburt Field, Florida to NAS Oceana, Virginia with Virginia Beach-based RED HORSE detachment on board who had been training at Hurlburt.

1991 – United Airlines Flight 585, a Boeing 737, crashes while attempting to land at Colorado Springs, Colorado, killing all 25 people on board. The cause of the crash is not identified until the investigation into the crash of USAir Flight 427 in 1994; both crashes are eventually attributed to defects in a valve associated with the rudder.

1991 – US Navy North American CT-39G Sabreliner, BuNo 160057, c/n 306-107, ex-N56798, crashed at 1145 hrs. in a neighborhood ~.5 miles S of NAS Glenview, Illinois, killing three crew, but missing houses. No one on ground was injured and witnesses said the pilot appeared to intentionally avoid structures, the jet coming down 20 feet from homes.

1972 – Mohawk Airlines Flight 405, a Fairchild Hiller FH227B twin-engine turboprop, crashes near Albany, New York while descending to land, killing 16 of the 48 people on board and 1 on the ground.

1969 – After a lengthy succession of taxi and runway tests, the first prototype Concorde 001 (F-WTSS) makes its first flight, with Andre Turcat at the controls. The flight lasts 29 min.

1969 – The United States Navy establishes its Fighter Weapons School at Naval Air Station Miramar, California, to improve its fighter pilots’ dogfighting skills. The school will become popularly known as “TOPGUN. ”

1969 – Apollo 9, the second manned launch of a Saturn V rocket, launches to psend 10 days in lower Earth orbit to test the lunar module’s behavior in space.

1965 – The United States begins Operation Blue Tree, medium-altitude photographic reconnaissance and bomb damage assessment flights over North Vietnam.

1964 – The port side cargo door of a Lockheed C-130 Hercules explosively blows off the aircraft at 19,000 feet above the Smoky Mountain resort town of Gatlinburg, Tennessee, carrying one crewman to his death and another hanging onto a chain outside the aircraft as the fuselage decompresses. Crew chief Jose Gallegoes, 32, was holding a length of chain attached to his bolted-down tool box when the access door blew off. "Something like an explosion happened and I found myself hanging out of the plane", the San Luis, Colorado man said later. "I was hanging by the chain with which I was securing the tool box. That chain saved my life", he said. His fellow crewmen pulled him back inside the cargo plane, but there was nothing they could do for the as yet unidentified crewman who fell to his death on the mountainous slopes below, ~35 miles E of Knoxville, Tennessee. He had no parachute. A search was begun for his body. The departing door also sheared off the number two (port inner) propeller. The pilot, Flt. Lt. David W. Parsons, a RAF exchange officer from Wellington, England, was circling over McGhee Tyson Air Force Base when the door gave way. He immediately initiated an emergency landing, but found that he had no hydraulic control for the nose gear, touching down on the main gear before the Hercules settled onto its nose, skidding ~5,000 feet along the runway before coming to a halt. None of the seven crew remaining aboard were hurt. The C-130 was en route from Sewart Air Force Base, at Smyrna, Tennessee to Myrtle Beach Air Force Base, South Carolina, when the accident occurred. Most of the plane's parachutes were stacked near the door and were carried over the side by the decompression. Sheriff Ray Noland stated that an open parachute was seen drifting down near Sevierville, Tennessee, and deputies searching for the crewman's body found a parachute, a seat and the door ~two miles N of state highway 73, E of Gatlinburg.

1960 – The longest nonstop flight ever made by a Royal Air Force (RAF) aircraft is completed when a Vickers Valiant B.Mk.1 (serial no. XD858) piloted by Sqdn. Ldr. J. H. Garstin flies around the British Isles for a total distance of 8,500 miles aided by two inflight refuelings.

1953 – A Canadian Pacific Airlines de Havilland Comet crashes on takeoff from Karachi, Pakistan, killing all 11 aboard. Excessive nose-pitch causes it to stall, resulting in first fatal jetliner crash in history.

1952 – A Royal Air Force Vickers Valetta VW153 crashed on take-off from RAF Butterworth, Malaya.

1950 – Australian Quantas inaugurates a passenger service from Sydney to Tokyo.

1949 – Commanded by Capt. James G. Gallagher, the crew of 14 aboard the Strategic Air Command B-5 A Lucky Lady II of the Forty-third Bombardment Group, USAF, completes the first nonstop round-the-world flight of 94 hours 1 min. Flying a distance of 23,452 miles the B-50 A is refueled four times by KB-29 tankers before landing back at Carswell AFB, Texas.

1942 – Three Imperial Japanese Navy Mitsubishi A6 M Zero fighters shoot down the KNILM Douglas DC-3 airliner Pelikaan (tail number PK-AFV) as it approaches Broome, Australia, forcing it to make a belly landing in shallow surf at Carnot Bay, then strafe it, killing or seriously injuring four of the 12 people on board. A Japanese Kawanishi H6 K (Allied reporting name “Mavis”) flying boat bombs the wreckage the following day. A shipment of diamonds worth A£150,000 to A£300,000 aboard the plane disappears, apparently stolen.

1942 – (Overnight) 235 British bombers – The largest number sent against a single target to date – Attack the Renault vehicle factory at Boulogne-Billancourt in Paris in an attempt at night precision bombing. Three-quarters of the bombs hit the factory, but 367 French civilians are killed and 10,000 rendered homeless by errant bombs. The death toll in fact is greater than in any single attack on a German city thus far in the war.

1911 – With Capt. Benjamin D. Foulois navigating a course and Phillip Parmelee at the controls, the Wright Type B on loan from Robert F. Collier sets an official U. S. cross-country record from Laredo to Eagle Pass, Texas. It flies the 106 miles in 2 hours 10 min.

2013 – Two minutes from touchdown at Goma International Airport, the Compagnie Africaine d'Aviation Fokker 50 9Q-CBD crashes in bad weather in an empty lot in Goma, Democratic Republic of the Congo, killing six of the people on board and injuring all three survivors.

2012 – A Yemen Air Force Antonov An-26 transport plane destroyed by an explosion on the ground at Sana'a International Airport.

2011 – The Libyan Air Force conducts occasional air strikes on Ajdabiya‍ '​s weapon-storage area, with no reported casualties.[1]

2008 – An Iraqi military Mil Mi-17 helicopter crashes south of Baiji due to a sandstorm, about 90 miles (140 km) south of Mosul in northern Iraq, killing an American soldier and seven other people.[3][4][5]

2007 – US Airways and America West combine their reservations computer systems.

2006 – The final attempt to contact Pioneer 10 results in no response, more than three years after the last contact was made from the spacecraft. It is considered to be the first human-built object to be on a solar system-leaving trajectory.

1981 – Two USAF McDonnell-Douglas F-4 Phantom IIs collide near Albacete, Spain, crash in flames, killing two of the four crew. The other two parachute to safety. Airframes involved were F-4D, serial given by one source as 66-755, but this may be only a partial, 'SP' tail code, of the 401st Tactical Fighter Wing, and F-4D-30-MC, 66-7620, 'TJ' tail code, of the 52d Tactical Fighter Wing. Both fighters were on a routine training mission from Torrejon Air Base near Madrid. The crash occurred ~130 miles SE of Madrid.

1958 – A Royal Canadian Navy McDonnell F2H-3 Banshee, BuNo 126333, Sqn. No. 142 of VF-871, suffers an apparent brake failure while taxiing aboard HMCS Bonaventure (CVL 22) and rolls off the carrier's deck. Pilot LCDR Brian Bell-Irving ejects as airplane falls, but partially opened canopy does not jettison, and Bell-Irving is knocked unconscious and severely injured as ejection seat smashes through canopy and slams into ocean surface. The damaged fighter jet catches fire and sinks; Bell-Irving is subsequently hauled aboard escort destroyer HMCS Haida (DDE 215) but dies from his injuries. This is the only operational ejection from a RCN Banshee.

1958 – Royal Navy de Havilland Sea Venom FAW.22, XG732, 'B 440', of 891 Squadron, piloted by a pair of exchange pilots from the U.S. Marine Corps, lands on HMS Bulwark sans nose gear which refuses to extend. Airframe is repaired, but is lost in a ditching off of the same carrier on 9 May 1958.

1957 – 4-15 – A US Navyairship sets a duration record for a non-rigid airship, traveling 9,448 miles (15,205 km) in 264 hours 12 min

1948 – The first American civilian to fly at supersonic speeds is Herbert Henry Hoover in Bell X-1 in Muroc, California.

1946 – American Airlines begins using the Douglas DC-4 cross country on trips that lasted 13-to-14-hours.

1945 – At precisely 0151 hrs., Junkers Ju 88G-6, Werknummer 620028, D5+AX, piloted by Hauptman J. Dreher, with a crew of three from night fighter unit 13./Nachtjagdgeschwader 3, becomes the last Axis aircraft to crash on British soil during World War II. Confused by auto headlights, fighter hits tree while attacking the airfield at RAF Elvington, crashing at Sutton upon Derwent, Yorkshire, all four KWF. Two other Ju 88s had crashed in separate incidents at 0137 and 0145 hrs

1945 – Task Force 58 returns to base at Ulithi Atoll. During its two-week cruise to the Tokyo area and Okinawa its pilots have claimed 393 Japanese aircraft shot down and 250 destroyed on the ground, in exchange for the loss of 84 planes, 60 pilots, and 21 air crewmen in combat and 59 planes, eight pilots, and six air crewmen in non-combat incidents.

1945 – Low on fuel after a raid on Japan, a B-29 Superfortress lands on Iwo Jima, the first of about 2,400 B-29 s to do so before World War II ends in August.

1942 – (Overnight) – Two Imperial Japanese Navy Kawanishi H8 K (Allied reporting name “Emily”) flying boats fly from Wotje, refuel from a submarine at French Frigate Shoals, and fly on to bomb Oahu in the Hawaiian Islands, returning safely. The mission is unsuccessful because of heavy cloud cover in the Honolulu area. It is the first combat flight of the H8 K.

1937 – Entered Service: B-17 Flying Fortress with the United States Army Air Corps 2nd Bombardment Group

1936 – The last great passenger-carrying airship, a veritable behemoth in its day, takes to the air for the first time. The German dirigible LZ 129, the Hindenburg, is powered by four 1,320-hp Daimler-Benz DB 602 diesel engines. The Hindenburg makes its first Atlantic crossing in the record time of 64 hours 53 min on May 6.

1936 – Authorization to form No. 6 (TB) Squadron at Trenton with Vedette’s.

1928 – The Boeing Model 204 (B-1E), a four-seat civilian flying boat, makes its first flight. Ten are built and are the last aircraft Boeing built specifically for private ownership by civilians. Four built by Boeing Aircraft of Canada in Vancouver, British Columbia, are called “Thunderbirds. ”

^"Iraqi helicopter crash kills all 8 aboard; cause was sandstorm". Star Tribune. 2008-03-04. Retrieved 2010-07-15. An Iraqi military helicopter crashed in a sandstorm, killing the seven Iraqis and one American service member on board, U.S. and Iraqi officials said Tuesday. [...] The Iraqi Defense Ministry said two Russian-built Mi-17 Hip transport helicopters were ferrying troops from the northern city of Tal Afar to Baghdad on Monday when they encountered bad weather south of Beiji. One aircraft was able to avoid the storm, but the other crashed, said Muhammad Askari, a ministry spokesman. Askari said the helicopter crew was made up of an Iraqi and a foreigner, but did not specify the latter's nationality. The U.S. military later confirmed the foreigner was an American. All six passengers were Iraqis, Askari said. It was the deadliest helicopter crash in Iraq since a U.S. Black Hawk went down during night maneuvers in northern Iraq on Aug. 22, killing all 14 troops on board.

2003 – At Saint-Forget, France a Socata Rallye MS.892 (registered as F-BLSO) collided midair with a Cessna F150 (registered as F-BSIQ) killing the instructor and student pilot in the latter aircraft. After investigation, the BEA called for obligatory use of transponders in a large zone around Paris.[3]

1991 – Aeropostal Alas de Venezuela Flight 108 took off from La Chinita International Airport in Maracaibo, Venezuela, on a short-haul flight to Santa Barbara Ed-L Delicias Airport in Venezuela with 45 passengers and crew. Some minutes later the McDonnell Douglas DC-9 crashed on the side of a foggy mountain near La Valesa in the La Aguada sector of the Páramo Los Torres and burst into flames. All 45 people on board died.

1981 – Venera 14, a Soviet space probe for intended to explore Venus, arrives at its destination. The aircraft has a twin-ship, Venera 13, which launched and also arrived 5 days prior.

1979 – Voyager 1 makes its closest approach to Jupiter at a distance of 172,000 miles.

1978 – The Landsat 3 launches, third in a series of photo satellites. Its Earth-snapping work would last five years until March of 1983.

1976 – The last flight of the second Concorde prototype aircraft to the Fleet Air Arm Museum at the Royal Naval Air Station, Yeovilton, England.

1974 – A USN North American RA-5C Vigilante crashes in the Gulf of Mexico 35 miles W of Tampa, Florida. Both crew eject, two chutes observed, but only the navigator is recovered, by a fishing boat.

1974 – A USAF Boeing KC-135A Stratotanker of the 7th Air Refuelling Squadron, 7th Bomb Wing, en route from Eielson AFB, Alaska to its homebase at Carswell AFB, Texas, suffered explosive decompression when a small window blew out at 35,000 feet at 1630 hrs. EST about 40 miles SE of Fort Nelson, British Columbia. One passenger of the 25 aboard died from the effects of the rapid decompression; others and eight crew okay. The tanker made an emergency landing at a Canadian Armed Forces Base at Edmonton, Alberta.

1974 – A USAF Boeing KC-135A Stratotanker, 57-1500, of the 91st Air Refuelling Squadron, 384th Air Refuelling Wing, crashed and burned shortly after take-off from McConnell AFB, Kansas, killing two of seven crew. Air Force spokesmen reported that the aircraft was carrying 136,000 pounds of fuel when it crashed 3,000 feet from the main runway, after it apparently lost power.

1967 – Lake Central Flight 527, a Convair 340, crashes near Marseilles, Ohio after a propeller detaches and severs the fuselage, causing a loss of control; all 38 on board die.

1967 – U.S. Coast Guard Grumman HU-16 Albatross, 1240, out of St. Petersburg, Florida, deploys to drop a dewatering pump to a sinking 40-foot yacht, "Flying Fish", off of Carrabelle, Florida. Shortly after making a low pass after the sinking vessel to drop the pump, the flying boat crashes a short distance away, with loss of all six crew. Submerged wreck not identified until 2006.

1966 – For the first time, the United States employs the Alpha section (listing major fixed ground targets in North Vietnam) of a U. S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Rolling Thunder order.

1963 – Country music star Patsy Cline and three others are killed in the crash of a Piper Comanche near Camden, Tennessee.

1962 – A Convair B-58 (serial no. 59-2458) of the Forty-third Bombardment Wing breaks three records during a round trip between New York and Los Angeles in 4 hours 41 min 14.98 seconds. The fastest transcontinental crossing between Los Angeles and New York is accomplished in 2 hours 58.71 seconds at an average speed of 1,214.65 mph. The third record notches the fastest time between New York and Los Angeles.

1960 – A Fairchild C-119G Flying Boxcar, 53-8152A, c/n 255, of the 12th Troop Carrier Squadron, 322d Air Division, Dreux Air Base, France, departed Adana, Turkey with 3 crew, 15 passengers and 7,614 lbs. of cargo, made a fuelling stop at Athens, Greece, departing at 1600 hrs. for Naples, Italy. Two hours into an expected 3:02 flight, the port engine began to over-speed. Attempts to cut off and/or feather the propeller failed and the aircraft lost altitude. The pilot elected to shut down the engine by turning off the fire wall shut off. The engine did stop, but the propeller shaft sheared with the propeller wind-milling at an increased rate. The aircraft began to descend at a rate of 500 feet per minute. Realizing that the aircraft will not reach the chosen emergency airfield, at Crotone, Italy, the pilot circled the aircraft over the small town of Botricello ordering the passengers and radio operator to bail out - all landing safely with only minor injuries. Pilot Harold Cliffton Hardesty and co-pilot Harry Francis Dawley, Jr. then landed the C-119 on the nearby beach at 1830 hrs. (dusk) with gear down, full flaps, landing light on, with an approach speed of 120 kts. and touch-down at 90 kts. The roll out was straight for 800-1,000 feet before the C-119 veered to the right and into the water, with the cockpit filling to about the level of the side window. The two crew evacuated through the top hatch, sliding off the left wing and swam ashore. Although the plane had stopped basically intact, the wave action overnight destroyed the airframe.

1960 – Late pre-production English Electric Lightning F.1, XG334, c/n 95023, of the Air Fighting Development Squadron, RAF Coltishall, Norfolk, aircraft 'A', crashed near Wells-next-the-Sea after suffering complete hydraulic failure, resulting in loss of all control-surface power and hydraulic services. The pilot, Sqn. Leader Harding, ejected safely, descending near Syderstone, in North Norfolk. Total flights 34, hours flown 23 h 35 min. This was the first loss of the type. Extensive sea search around Roaring Middle Light failed to find any trace of the missing Lightning.

1958 – Explorer 2 launches, but due to a mechanical failure, does not reach orbit.

1957 – A Blackburn Beverley C Mark I heavy transport aircraft, XH117, c/n 1023, of 53 Squadron Royal Air Force crashed on approach to RAF Abingdon, England following engine failure due to fuel starvation. Eighteen occupants killed and two on the ground.

1943 – (Overnight) Royal Air Force Bomber Command begins a bombing campaign against the Ruhr area of Germany with an Oboe-marked raid on Essen. Known as the Battle of the Ruhr, it will last until mid-July. The first raid destroys 53 buildings in the Krupp complex and destroys 160 acres (65 ha) of Essen

1942 – The Civil Air Patrol begins maritime patrols off the United States East Coast.

1923 – The great aeronautical pioneer Igor Sikorsky sets up the Sikorsky Aero Engineering Corp. in the United States with the financial help of several important leading figures, including Sergey Rachmaninoff. Sikorsky left Russia in 1917 when revolution threatened his work and his life.

1906 – Traian Vuia begins testing his “Vuia 1″ at Montesson, France, by driving it as an automobile without its wings mounted. It is a high-wing monoplane powered by a carbonic acid gas engine, and is first aircraft with pneumatic tires. It has been described as the first man-carrying monoplane of basically modern configuration.

1990 – The last flight of the SR-71 Blackbird takes place, when Lieutenant Colonels Ed Yielding (pilot) and Joseph Vida (reconnaissance systems officer) fly U. S. Air Force SR-71 A serial number 61-17972 from Palmdale, California, to Washington Dulles International Airport in Virginia, setting a Los Angeles, California-to-Washington, D. C. world record time of 1 h 4 min 20 seconds at an average speed of 2,124 mph (3,420 kph). The aircraft is delivered to the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum to be put on display

1986 – Japan Air Lines embarks the world’s heaviest man, an 880-lb Austrian flying from Frankfurt, Germany, as a passenger; 16 seats are removed from the cabin to make room for him.

1968 – First single Huey turned over to 403 Squadron in Uplands ceremony.

1968 – Air France Flight 212 crashed into the northwestern slope of La Soufrière Mountain, in Guadeloupe with the loss of all 63 lives on board.

1965 – A Sikorsky SH-3 A Sea King makes the first non-stop helicopter flight across North America. The distance traveled is 2,116 miles (3,405 km) and a new distance record for helicopters

1961 – The B-52 H made its first flight. The H model is still in service today.

1951 – The Martin aircraft company gains production rights to the English Electric Canberra as the B-57

1944 – The Lancasters and Halifax’s of Bomber Command began an offensive against the German transport network in occupied Europe, attacking railway yards in France.

1940 – France informs the Finnish government that it will dispatch an expeditionary force including 72 bombers to Finland on March 13, but the Winter War ends before the French force can begin its journey.

1935 – U. S secretary of commerce signs a special air traffic regulation that prohibits air flights over parts of Washington, D. C.

1927 – Gordon Cooper, astronaut, was born (d. 2004). Gordon “Gordo” Cooper was one of the seven original astronauts in Project Mercury, the first manned-space effort by the United States. Cooper was launched into space on 15 May 1963 aboard the Mercury-Atlas 9 (Faith 7) spacecraft, the last Mercury mission. He orbited the earth 22 times and logged more time in space than all five previous Mercury astronauts combined – 34 hours, 19 min and 49 seconds, traveling 546,167 miles (878,971 km) at 17,547 mph (28,239 km/h), pulling a maximum of 7.6 g (74.48 m/s²). Cooper achieved an altitude of 165.9 statute miles (267 km) at apogee. He was the first American astronaut to sleep not only in orbit but on the launch pad during a countdown.

2012 – A Syrian Air Force Mikoyan MiG-23 was destroyed on the ground by an anti-tank missile.

2008 – Failure of a brake metering valve causes a Rockwell B-1B Lancer bomber of the 28th Bomb Wing to roll forward into two rescue vehicles after engine shutdown at Andersen AFB, Guam, Air Combat Command said 3 September 2008. Damage to the B-1B and the two vehicles totaled $5.8 million. The "Bone" had stopped over at Andersen while transiting home to Ellsworth AFB, South Dakota from the Singapore Air Show and had taken off for home but returned after the crew declared an in-flight emergency. The aircraft stopped at designated spot off the runway to be met by emergency apparatus, but rolled into the vehicles unexpectedly.

2007 – Garuda Indonesia Flight 200 crashes on landing at Adisucipto International Airport in Indonesia, killing 22 of the 138 on board. The 737-497 (PK-GZC) touches down almost double the proper landing speed after the pilots forgot to lower the flaps. The Captain ignored both aircraft warnings and First Officer request to go-around. He was later charged with six counts of manslaughter, and found guilty of negligence.

2001 – A Skymaster Airlines Boeing 707-331 C (PT-MST) crashes in São Paulo, Brazil after a hard landing. The cargo flight had three crewmembers aboard, all of whom survived, although the aircraft was ultimately written-off.

1999 – An Indian Air Force Antonov An-32 crashes upon landing in New Delhi, India during poor weather. All 19 people on board are killed.

1988 – An Northrop F-5E Tiger II crashed on take-off from Tyndall Air Force Base near Panama City, Florida. Lt. Col Charles Lemire of Mesa, Arizona, died in the crash. The aircraft had made a stop at the base before resuming a cross-country training mission. The pilot was trying to eject when the jet hit a wooded area off the end of the runway, according to a base spokesman. The pilot and aircraft were assigned to a squadron at Williams Air Force Base near Phoenix, Arizona. The squadron is part of the 405th Tactical Training Wing at Luke Air Force Base near Phoenix.

1961 – The # 2 North America X-15 became the first manned aircraft to exceed Mach 4 when pilot Capt. Robert M. White reached a speed of 2,905 mph which, at the altitude of 77,450 ft, he achieved Mach 4.43.

1959 – Aviator M. C. Garlow becomes the first to fly a million miles in a jet airplane. Frequent Flier Elite Status FTW.

1958 – A USMC Fairchild R4Q Packet transport crashes in the Pacific Ocean off Naha, Okinawa while returning from Naval Air Station Cubi Point to Atsugi, Japan.

1956 – Dan Perkins, engineer at Britain’s Royal Aircraft Establishment, makes his first flight in an inflatable airplane in Bedfordshire, England. It takes 25 min to inflate it, using a large domestic vacuum cleaner.

1950 – Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 307, a Martin 2-0-2, crashes near Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport, after hitting a flagpole during approach, killing all 13 on board and two on the ground.

1946 – Silverplate Boeing B-29-30-MO Superfortress, 42-65387, from Kirtland Army Air Field, New Mexico, on practice mission to Los Lunas bombing range, releases 10,150 pound Fat Man shape, and then disintegrates for unknown reasons and spins in from 32,000 feet. Ten crew die, wreckage strewn up to 16 miles from main portion. B-29 that drops the weapon in Operation Crossroads test Able on 1 July 1946, is named "Dave's Dream" for bombardier Dave Semple, killed in this accident.

1938 – Nationalist forces begin an offensive in Aragon, supported by German aircraft of the Condor Legion. The Condor Legion by this time has two Messerschmitt Bf 109 groups of four squadrons, two Heinkel He 51 groups of two squadrons, four bomber groups of three squadrons equipped with Heinkel He 111 s and Junkers Ju 52 s, and a reconnaissance group of three squadrons equipped with Heinkels and Dornier Do 17 s.

1934 – Juan de la Cierva lands an autogyro on the Spanish Navy aviation ship Dédalo. It is the first time an autogyro lands on a Spanish ship.

2002 – A Grumman F-14A Tomcat, BuNo 158618, of VF-211, based at NAS Oceana, Virginia Beach, Virginia crashes into the Arabian Sea after a failed attempt to land on the carrier USS John C. Stennis. The Navy said both crew members were pulled from the water by a rescue helicopter shortly after the accident. Neither appeared to be seriously injured.

1988 – Two Sikorsky UH-60 Blackhawk helicopters from Fort Campbell, Kentucky, collided on a night training mission. They were flying at 92 mph air speed and about 250 feet from the ground when they collided a Fort Campbell spokesman said. The Army identified three of the dead as Staff Sgt. Charles L. Shirley, 21, of Arkansas; Sgt. Dennis Sabot, 28, of Iowa; and Spec. 4 Samuel A. Hintz, 23, of Ohio, all from the 2nd Battalion, 502nd Infantry. A total of 17 soldiers were killed in the crash.

1973 – A Douglas EC-47 Skytrain carrying members of the US Army Golden Knights parachute team on a recruiting tour crashes and explodes at ~0900 hrs. in a muddy cornfield on the Basil Perry farm near Silk Hope, North Carolina while en route to their first performance of the season, at Overland Park, Kansas, killing 11 team members, two flight crew and the crew chief. The flight had departed Fort Bragg, North Carolina, at 0808 hrs. Cause was found to be overloading caused by the installation of a heavy metal plate floor, installed in Vietnam, but not entered in the logbook.

1951 – A certifacate of airworthiness is granted to the first Canadian-designed and built helicopter, the Sznyler SG-VI Grey Gull, at Dorval, QC.

1949 – Nonstop flight of 56 hours and 2 min has put captain William Odom in the record books. Leaving Honolulu, Hawaii, he covers a distance of 4,957.25 miles before landing at Teterboro, New Jersey to gain the world record in Class C-1-c for light aircraft.

1946 – The Bell 47 receives the first type certificate awarded to a commercial helicopter.

1942 – (Overnight) Royal Air Force Bomber Command bombs Essen, Germany, on three consecutive nights with 211, 187, and 126 aircraft respectively, losing a combined total of 16 bombers. The raids are the combat debut of the Gee navigation aid, raising British hopes that precision bombing of the Krupp armaments factory will be achieved, but it is not hit, and bombs in fact do far more damage to neighboring towns than to Essen itself. The third raid includes two Avro Lancasters, the first use of the Lancaster against a German target.

1937 – A Nationalist offensive begins against Guadalajara, Spain, with support by Italian forces, including 50 fighters and 12 reconnaissance planes.

2011 – The Space ShuttleDiscovery, first of the space shuttles to be retired, glides to a landing to end its 39th and final mission – the most by any space shuttle.[7]

2009 – Lion Air Flight 793, an McDonnell Douglas MD-90-30, registration PK-LIL, departs the runway at Soekarno-Hatta International Airport, Indonesia, and spins through 180°. All 172 people on board are evacuated safely but the aircraft is damaged beyond economic repair.

1973 – Canada started direct air service with the Federal Republic of Germany and The People’s Republic of China.

1972 – American aircraft record their 100th protective reaction strike of the Vietnam War against enemy surface-to-air missile and antiaircraft artillery sites.

1967 – TWA Flight 553, a Douglas DC-9, collides with a Beechcraft Baron near Dayton, Ohio, killing all 26 on both planes.

1964 – An armed U. S. Army Bell HU-1B Huey escorting U. S. Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara into "the heart of the Communist-infested Mekong River Delta" in South Vietnam, crashes into the Bassac River, killing the enlisted door gunners, who apparently drown. The helicopter goes down just as McNamara lands in another chopper with Maj. Gen. Hguyen Khanh, head of South Vietnam's military government. The Huey's engine apparently stalls, losing power just as the helicopter executes a sharp sweeping turn upward after making a low level pass over some trees while looking for snipers. The Huey plunges into the river, sinks immediately, with loss of the gunners. The officer-pilots escape and are rescued. In hospital they are found to have suffered only minor injuries. Some members of the SecDef's party witness the accident but McNamara does not. He states later that he is "grieved beyond words" over the loss.

1954 – McDonnell XF3H-1 Demon, BuNo 125444, suffers explosion of Westinghouse XJ40-WE-6 engine, pilot B. North ejects at 15,000 feet. Airframe impacts on land. Second prototype is grounded permanently shortly thereafter as being unsafe to fly, and scrapped, with little additional data expected to be produced by its operation.

1953 – USMC Grumman F9F-4 Panther, BuNo 125199, 'WP 10', of VMF-223, piloted by Capt. William H. Bezzell, USMC, suffers apparent tailhook failure while coming aboard USS Bennington, operating off of Guantanamo Bay Naval Base during post-refit shakedown training, bounces into the air, sails through the nylon Davis safety net airborne, hits deck again and dives into the forward elevator well, landing on top of nose of another F9F-4 of the same unit on the lowered elevator. Quick reactions by hangar crew in flooding the area with foam and closing doors to the hangar bay averts disaster and no post-crash fire occurs. Pilot uninjured, and injuries to most of 40 crew involved are minor, but Airman Ricketts, who was underneath the Panther on the elevator, is seriously injured and is eventually discharged when his condition does not improve.

1949 – Viet Minh leader Ho Chi Minh orders the organization of an Air Force Research Committee for the Democratic Republic of Vietnam.

1945 – (9–10) The Great Tokyo Air Raid, known by the USAAF as Operation MEETINGHOUSE, an overnight incendiary bombing raid by B-29 Superfortresses on Tokyo, is one of the most destructive air raids in history, rivaling the twin atom bomb raids of five months later, in destruction. It creates a conflagration which destroys 41 square kilometers (16 sq mi) of the city, killing an estimated 88,000 to 125,000 people, injuring at least 41,000 and perhaps as many as a million people, and leaving probably a million people homeless.

1945 – Disappointed in strategic bombing results against Japan with B-29 Superfortresses employing high-altitude daylight bombing as used in Europe, the United States Army Air Forces‘ Twentieth Air Force switches to low-altitude night bombing of Japan using incendiary bombs for the rest of World War II.

1942 – (9 – 12) Fairey Albacore torpedo bombers from the aircraft carrier HMS Victorious attack the German battleship Tirpitz while she is at sea off Norway. They score no hits, and Tirpitz shoots down two Albacores. It is the only time that Allied forces attack Tirpitz while she is in the open sea.

1942 – The United States Army Air Forces are reorganized, with the separate Air Force Combat Command (the combat element) and United States Army Air Corps (the logistics and training element) discontinued. General Henry H. Arnold, formerly Chief of the Army Air Forces, becomes Commanding General of Army Air Forces. The term “Air Corps” survives until 1947, but only as an informal, collective reference to the aviation branch of service of the United States Army without indicating any formal organization.

1938 – A new parachute descent record of 35,450ft. is achieved by the French parachutist James Williams when he jumps from the cockpit of an ANF Les Mureaux 113 high-wing monoplane after taking off from the airfield at Chartres. Dropping to a height above the ground of 650 ft. in 2 min 50 seconds before opening his parachute, Williams easily achieves a world free-fall record.

1928 – The English aviatrix Lady Mary Bailey takes off from Croydon on what becomes the first round-trip flight between London and Cape Town, South Africa flown by a woman. She arrives back in England on May 12.

1918 – The first American air casualty in World War I is Capt. James E. Miller who loses his life in a French Spad while flying a practice patrol across the German lines.

1916 – R. H. Mulock first Canadian to qualify as a pilot in the British Air Services.

1915 – Johnnie Johnson, British fighter pilot, was born (d. 2001). Air Vice Marshal James Edgar “Johnnie” Johnson was an Royal Air Force (RAF) pilot who during the Second World War shot down 38 Luftwaffe aircraft, thus becoming the British flying ace with the greatest number of victories during the war.

1914 – Lieutenant Alejandro Bello Silva was a Chileanaviator who disappeared during his qualifying flight for certification as a military pilot. In the pre-dawn hours, this date, Lieutenant Silva was in the Lo Espejo aerodrome, where he was to take an examination to earn the designation Military Pilot. Bello and two companions had to complete the circuit from Lo Espejo to Culitrín, to Cartagena, and back to Lo Espejo, in the central region of Chile, in order to pass the exam. On the first attempt, the aviators had to return to base due to near-zero visibility caused by heavy fog. Bello damaged his aircraft during the landing, and switched to an 80 horsepower (60 kW) Sánchez-Besa biplane (tail number 13, nicknamed "Manuel Rodríguez") for the second attempt. He took off together with one companion and the instructor, who had to make an emergency landing for refueling. Nevertheless, Bello continued his route and was lost among the clouds. He was never seen again and many searches over time have failed to find any trace of him or his aircraft.

1910 – The first serving member of the Canadian armed forces to take an aeroplane flight in Canada, Major G. S. Maunsell, was J. A. D. McCurdy‘s passenger on two flights of the Canadian Aerodrome Company’s Baddeck No. 2 biplane at Baddeck, Nova Scotia, Canada.

2010 – A United States Marine Corps McDonnell-Douglas F/A-18D Hornet, BuNo 164694, 'WK-01', from VMFA(AW)-224 crashed into the Atlantic Ocean, app. 35 miles (56 km) east of St. Helena Sound, South Carolina, after a double engine failure and a fire. Both pilots ejected and were floating in an inflatable life raft for about one hour before they were rescued by a USCG helicopter.

2010 – A Brazilian Army Eurocopter Fennec helicopter crashed During a night training flight during Operation Caburé. All four crew members died.

1986 – The U. S. Navy selects the F/A-18 Hornet as the official airplane of the Blue Angels.

1986 – The Pan American World Airways Boeing 747-121 Clipper Ocean Pearl, operating as Flight 125 with 245 people on board, experiences pressurization problems during climb out from London Heathrow Airport in the United Kingdom, and returns to the airport. An investigation finds that latching problems had allowed the forward cargo door to come ajar. A similar door problem will lead to a fatal accident aboard United Airlines Flight 811 in February 1989.

1967 – West Coast Airlines Flight 720, a Fokker F27 Friendship, crashes on Stukel Mountain just after takeoff in a mix of snow and rain from Klamath Falls Airport in Klamath Falls, Oregon, due to icing of its wings and control surfaces, killing all four people on board.

1967 – American aircraft attack the steel and iron works at Thái Nguyên, North Vietnam, for the first time.

1967 – Capt. Mac C. Brestel, an F-105 pilot with the 355th Tactical Fighter Squadron at Takhli Royal Thai AFB, Thailand, became the first U. S. Air Force pilot to down two MiGs in one mission in the Vietnam War.

1966 – Maj. Bernard Fisher from the first Commando Squadron landed an A-1E on A Shau runway, Vietnam, under fire from North Vietnamese troops to rescue a downed pilot, Maj. Dafford W. Myers from the 602nd Fighter Squadron. President Lyndon B. Johnson presented Major Fisher the Medal of Honor for heroism on Jan. 19, 1967 and he became the first Air Force man to be so honored for action in the Southeast Asian conflict.

1960 – The last flight by a United States Air Force-operated North American B-25 Mitchell takes place, when TB-25 J-25-NC, 44-30854, the last Mitchell in the U. S. Air Force inventory, lands at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida, for preservation.

1943 – The U. S. Army Air Forces activate the Fourteenth Air Force in China.

1943 – The first combat mission of the U. S. Army Air Forces Republic P-47 Thunderbolt takes place, a fighter sweep by England-based 4th Fighter Group P-47 s over France. They encounter no enemy aircraft.

1942 – The U. S. Navy aircraft carriers USS Lexington (CV-2) and USS Yorktown (CV-5) launch a 104-aircraft raid from south of New Guinea and over the Owen Stanley Mountains via a 7,500-foot (2,286-meter) pass to strike Japanese shipping off Lae and Salamaua, New Guinea.

1925 – One of the most outstanding flying boats of its day and a stunning demonstration of the skills of aircraft designer R. J. Michell, the Supermarine Southampton, makes its first flight with Henri Biard at the controls. It remains in service for 12 years, longer than any other flying boat before Sunderland.

1919 – Prime Minister of Australia Billy Hughes announces a £10,000 reward to the first aviator who will fly from the United Kingdom to Australia in less than 30 days.

1918 – Sole prototype Nieuport B.N.1, C3484, operating out of Sutton's Farm, a home aerodrome, Great Britain, catches fire in the air and is destroyed. No further development undertaken.

1918 – Günther Rall, German ace fighter pilot, was born. Rall is the third most successful fighter ace in history, and the most successful ace still living. He achieved a total of 275 victories: 272 on the Eastern Front, of which 241 were against Soviet fighters. He flew a total of 621 combat missions, was shot down 8 times and was wounded 3 times. He scored his victories in the Messerschmitt Bf 109 ‘Black 13′.

1905 – The French lawyer and aspiring aeronaut Ernest Archdeacon sends a letter to the Wright brothers in Dayton, Ohio challenging them to prove the validity of their claims. This marks the beginning of a bitter contest between the Wrights and European aeronauts.

2007 – Hukou F-5 F crash: A Republic of China Air Force F-5 F fighter jet crashed into a military base in Hukou, Taiwan on 11 May 2007. The accident killed the two Taiwanese crewmen and three Singaporean soldiers who were part of an unrelated unilateral training stint on the ground. Another eight Singaporeans were injured, with one sustaining serious burn injuries.

2004 – CH-46E Sea Knight 153389 from HMM-161 makes hard landing in brownout conditions in Al Anbar province; took additional damage during transportation and later was written off.[2]

1998 – The first two of four Boeing E-767 airborne warning and control system (AWACS) aircraft are officially handed over to the Japanese Air Self-Defense Force. The Boeing E-767 AWACS developed as a natural progression from the E-3 Sentry following the closure of Boeing’s 707 production line. The E-767 combines a Boeing 767-200ER airframe with the APY-2 development of the Sentry’s APY-1 radar and mission system. The first flight of the completed E-767 occurred on August 9, 1996 at Everett, Washington. Other military variants of the 767 are now under consideration, including tanker and strategic transport aircraft to replace the aging fleet of KC-135 s and B707 s in world wide military service1996 – ValuJet Flight 592 was a scheduled domestic passenger flight between Miami International Airport, Miami, Florida, and William B. Hartsfield Atlanta International Airport, Atlanta, Georgia. On Saturday, May 11, 1996, the McDonnell Douglas DC-9 aircraft flying that route crashed in the Everglades approximately 10 min after take-off, killing all 110 persons on board.

1990 – Philippine Airlines Flight 143 (PR143) was the route designator of a domestic flight from the Manila Ninoy Aquino Airport, Metro Manila, Philippines to Mandurriao Airport, Iloilo City. On May 11, 1990, the Boeing 737-300 (C/N 24466, MSN 1771) assigned to that route exploded and burned on the ground at Manila Ninoy Aquino International Airport. There were 8 fatalities among the 120 on-board passengers and crew from the violent explosion on the ground.

1955 – Orient Airways is merged into a new government-owned airline to become Pakistan International Airlines.

1955 – Third of 13 North American X-10s, GM-19309, c/n 3, on X-10 flight number 14, out of Edwards AFB, California, first flight of refitted c/n 3, the static test article. Vehicle exploded on gear retraction two seconds after lift-off - it was found that the destruct package was wired to the gear circuit instead of the engine circuit.

1945 – A Japanese balloon bomb, shot at in British Columbia, was recovered in Edson, Alberta.

1941 – The Congress of the United States passes the Lend-Lease bill, paving the way for the provision of (amongst other equipment) 16,000 warplanes to the UK. Later Lend-Lease arrangements will supply other Allied nations.

1918 – Lt. Paul Baer becomes the first AEF Air Service member awarded the Distinguished Service Cross.

1916 – The Royal Navy charters the cargo ship SS Manica for conversion into the first British balloon ship, HMS Manica. The Royal Navt will be the only navy during World War I to operate balloon ships, specialized ships designed to handle observation balloons as their sole function.

1912 – Lt. Frank P. Lahm opened an Army Air School at Fort William McKinley, Philippines, with two volunteer students, Lt. Moss L. Love and Cpl. Vernon L. Burge, who later became the first enlisted pilot.

1910 – Lieutenant J. W. Dunne’s D5 tailless biplane is tested at Eastchurch, Kent, England. It has a 60-hp Green engine and was built by Short Brothers.

2012 – A Russian Air Force Kamov Ka-52 on a training flight crashes at Bolshaya Kiselen in western Russia, killing one crew at the scene and the other crew member died in hospital. This was the first accident involving the Ka-52.

2010 – Afriqiyah Airways Flight 771, a scheduled international passenger flight, crashed at about 06:10 local time (04:10 UTC) on approach to Tripoli International Airport. Of the 104 passengers and crew on board, the sole survivor was 9-year-old Dutch boy Ruben van Assouw.

1998 – A C-141 from the 445th Airlift Wing, Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio, landed at Randolph AFB, Texas, with more than 50 former U. S. prisoners of war for Operation Homecoming’s silver anniversary. On Feb. 12, 1973, the same C-141 airlifted Americans from Gia Lam Airport, Hanoi, North Vietnam on the first mission to repatriate American servicemen from Southeast Asia. The Starlifter took the men to Randolph AFB, for the 25th annual “Freedom Flyers” reunion.

1998 – First test flight of the X-38, a spacecraft design planned for use as a future International Space Station emergency crew return “lifeboat”.

1993 – The Blizzard of 1993, also known as the “Storm of the Century” begins its two days of havoc along the east coast of North America. Nearly every airport stretching from Nova Scotia to Georgia is closed at some point during the 30 h storm.

1975 – An Air Vietnam Douglas DC-4 (XV-NUJ) is shot down by a surface-to-air missile in Pleiku, Vietnam, killing all 26 souls aboard.

1969 – The Lockheed AH-56 Cheyenne test programme suffers a setback when the rotor on prototype #3, 66-8828, hits the fuselage and kills the pilot. The accident occurs on a test flight where the pilot was to manipulate the controls to excite 0.5P oscillations (or half-P hop) in the rotor. 0.5P is a vibration that happens once per two main rotor revolutions, where P is the rotor rotational speed. The accident investigation noted that safety mechanisms on the controls had apparently been disabled for the flight. The investigation concluded that the pilot-induced oscillations had set up a resonant vibration that exceeded the rotor system's ability to compensate. After the investigation, the rotor and control systems would be modified to prevent the same problem from occurring again. The rotor blades and control system were stiffened, the mass of the gyro was increased, and the geometry of the rotor was adjusted.

1960 – A Boeing B-47E-35-DT Stratojet, 52-1414, of the 545th Bomb Squadron, 384th Bomb Wing, is overstressed, exploding in mid-air over Little Rock, Arkansas, at ~0645 hrs., debris falling on neighbourhoods of the city, setting many houses afire. Only the co-pilot, Lt. Thomas G. Smoak, 26, survived, parachuting after being thrown clear of the explosion; two other crew and a passenger died, plus two civilians on the ground. The dead crewmen were Capt. Herbert Aldridge, 37, aircraft commander; Lt. Col. Reynolds S. Watson, 43, navigator, and S/Sgt. Kenneth E. Brose, 25 (passenger). Civilian victims were Mrs. Andrew L. Clark, 62, who was alone in her home at 211 Colonial Court, where a major portion of the plane fell, and James LaRoy Hollabaugh, 29, adopted son of Mrs. Agnes Nilsson Grove of 1920 Maryland Avenue. Both of those houses were destroyed by fire but Mrs. Grove escaped with burns on her feet and abrasions on her legs. "Smoak came to rest entangled in a tree behind the house at 509 Midland Street. He spoke rationally to rescuers who had watched his parachute fall but was in a severe shock. He received emergency treatment on the spot from a physician who lived in the neighbourhood and was taken to Arkansas Baptist Hospital. His wife is a nurse at Arkansas Children's Hospital, two blocks from the Maryland - Summit crash scene. The scene of the heaviest destruction to property was at the intersection of Maryland and Summit Avenues. Two homes, that of Mrs. Marie Milligan at 824 Summit and that of Mrs. Grove, and an apartment building of three units on the south-east corner were destroyed by fire."

1953 – A RAF Avro Lincoln, RF531, 'C', of Central Gunnery School, is shot down 20 mi (32 km) NE of Lüneburg, Germany by a Soviet MiG-15 as it flies to Berlin on a training flight, resulting in the deaths of the seven crew members.

1950 – The Llandow air disaster: An Airflight Avro 689 Tudor V stalls and crashes after the rear cargo hold was overloaded, resulting in a center of gravity exceeding the aft limit; 80 out of the 83 people on board die, at the time the worst air disaster in history.

1938 – Junkers Ju 52's carry German troops to Vienna during the German Anschluss against Austria.

1932 – New landing aids are installed in Newark, New Jersey, at the busiest airport in the world, to supplement the night landing facilities already in existence there. In 1930 alone there were some 28,000 landings and the airport handled 20,000 passengers. Opened on October 1, 1928, Newark Liberty International Airport, the metropolitan region’s first major airport, was built by the City of Newark on 68 acres of marshland and quickly became the world's busiest commercial airport. During World War II, the Army Air Corps operated it. In 1948, the Port Authority assumed responsibility for operation and development.

1916 – A Burgess H biplane (No. 28) sets a world endurance record for a pilot and two passengers by remaining in the air for 7 hours 5 minutes. This particular airplane was modified by Grover C. Loening at the army training school in San Diego.

1908 – AEA Red Wing, flying from the surface of Keuka Lake near Hammondsport, New York. Flight distance is 97.2 m (319 ft) but ends with the aircraft collapsing to the ground, leaving the pilot slightly bruised. This is the first public demonstration of a powered aircraft flight in the United States.

1992 – Two B-52 bombers fly to Ryanzan Air Base near Moscow in exchange for a visit to the United States by three TU-95 Bear bombers and a TU Blackjack bomber from the Commonwealth of Independent States.

1987 – Japanese Air Self Defense Force Mitsubishi F-15J, 42-8840, of the 204 Hiko-tai, crashes into the sea 100 miles E of Hyakuri Air Base, Japan, following suspected spatial disorientation. Pilot KWF.

1982 – Boeing Boeing KC-135A-BN Stratotanker, 57-1489, assigned to the 197th Air Refueling Squadron, 161st Air Refueling Group, Arizona Air National Guard, crashed south of Luke AFB, Arizona. The KC-135 was on an instrument approach to Luke when a Grumman AA-1 Yankee, N6160L, collided with it aft of the wings, causing the tail section to separate from the rest of the aircraft, leading to loss of control and crash. All four crew members in the KC-135 and the two civilians in the Yankee were killed.

1967 – South African Airways Flight 406, a Vickers Viscount 818, crashes into the sea while on approach to East London, South Africa, killing all 25 passengers and crew on board. The pilot of the plane suffered a fatal heart attack while on approach and the co-pilot was unable to regain control of the aircraft.

1964 – Beginning of RCAF support of UN Peacekeeping operations on Cyprus.

1961 – McDonnell delivers the last of 807 F-101 Voodoos to the Air Force.

1958 – A Boeing B-47B-30-BW Stratojet, 51-2104, of the 379th Bombardment Wing, from Homestead AFB, Florida, crashes shortly after take-off, breaking into four parts while making a shallow turn at 1,500 feet (460 m), coming down 10 nm SW of Homestead. Four crew killed: Maj. Leon F. Hatcher Jr., aircraft commander; Maj. Frank H. Whyte Jr., instructor pilot; 1st Lt. Paul J. Pennington, Co-Pilot; Capt. George Reid, Navigator. On the same date, a TB-47B-10-BW Stratojet, 50‑0013, c/n 450028, of the 3520th Combat Crew Training Wing, out of McConnell AFB breaks up in flight over Tulsa, Oklahoma. Student pilot, instructor eject, parachute to safety, but crewman occupying the navigator's position does not eject and is killed. Both accidents are due to unexpected fatigue issues in the B-47 fleet.

1954 – A BOAC (British Overseas Airways Corporation) Lockheed L-749 A (G-ALAM) crashes in Kallang Singapore, killing 33 of the 40 on board. Pilot fatigue is blamed for the aircraft falling short of the runway and striking a concrete wall.

1952 – Entered Service: Airspeed Ambassador with British European Airways

1951 – The Australian airline Qantas begins a survey flight from Rose Bay, Sydney to Valparaiso, Chile with a Catalina (VH – ASA).

1940 – The Winter War between the Soviet Union and Finland ends in the defeat of Finland. During the 3½-month war, the Finnish Air Force has grown from 96 to 287 aircraft, and has lost 62 aircraft in air-to-air combat and 59 more damaged beyond repair, while the Soviet Union has lost between 700 and 900 – 725 confirmed destroyed and about 200 unconfirmed – of the 2,500 to 3,000 aircraft it has committed to the campaign, and another 300 damaged. The Soviet Air Force has dropped 150,000 bombs – About 7,500 tons (6,803,955 kg) of bombs – on Finnish territory, but has performed poorly; its operations in early December 1939 had failed to disrupt Finnish mobilization and, despite unusually clear weather in January and February, it failed to disrupt the lone railroad connecting Finland with the outside world for more than a few hours at a time or to disrupt Finnish merchant shipping, despite 60 air raids on Finnish ports.

1928 – The first Canadian woman to become a licensed pilot was Eileen Volick, passing her private pilot’s License (Certificate No. 77) in Hamilton, Ontario. Other Canadian women soon followed, obtaining private, commercial, multi-engine, instrument, and instructor ratings before the Second World War.

1927 – First of two Naval Aircraft Factory PN-8 flying boats, BuNo A-6799, delivered 8 May 1925, intended for a flight by the Navy from San Francisco to Hawaii, is wrecked while being transported fully assembled on the deck of the USS West Virginia. Hit by heavy seas, the plane is lifted against its tie-down cables, which cut through the hull, airframe written off with 32:48 flying hours.

1917 – The United States Army’s 6th Aero Squadron is organized in the Territory of Hawaii, operating three N-9 seaplanes.

1914 – Edward O’Hare, American pilot, is born (d. 1943). O’Hare was a naval aviator of the United States Navy who on 20 February 1942 became the U. S. Navy’s first flying ace and Medal of Honor recipient in World War II. On 19 September 1949, the Chicago, Illinois airport was renamed O’Hare International Airport in honor of Edward O’Hare.

2008 – An Lockheed Martin F-16C Block 25D Fighting Falcon, 84-1273, flown by pilot 2nd Lt. David J. Mitchell, 26, of Amherst, Ohio, crashes during training mission in a remote area three miles (5 km) S of Alamo Lake, Arizona. His body is located in a ravine near the aircraft wreckage. Mitchell, of the Ohio Air National Guard's 180th Fighter Wing at Toledo Express Airport, Swanton, Ohio, was assigned to the 62d Fighter Squadron at Luke AFB, Arizona since November 2007 as a student pilot. He had 237 total flying hours, ~26 in the F-16.

1980 – LOT Flight 7, an Ilyushin Il-62, crashes near Warsaw, Poland after the No. 2 engine disintegrates and severs the elevator and rudder control lines; all 87 on board are killed.

1979 – A British-built Trident aircraft crashed into a factory in Beijing, China killing an estimated 200 people, including a dozen crew and passengers and scores of victims in the factory.

1972 – Sterling Airways Flight 296, a Sud Caravelle, crashes near Kalba, United Arab Emirates due to pilot error; all 112 on board die in the worst air disaster in the history of the United Arab Emirates.

1972 – Two USAF McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom IIs have mid-air collision over the town of El Buste, Spain, about 30 miles from the joint US-Spanish base at Zaragoza. All four crewmen are KWF. Debris showered down onto the town, damaging communications and starting several roof fires, but no injuries to townspeople. Aircraft were returning to base in strong winds and broken clouds after a routine gunnery mission.

1960 – Within a year of completion of a major expansion program, Chicago’s O’Hare International airport has become the busiest terminal in the US, handling 10.2 million passengers in 1959, the Federal Aviation Agency (FAA) reports. In the same year it handled 431,600 take-offs and landings.

1957 – Sikorsky HO4S-3, 55892, c/n 55-892, of the Royal Canadian Navy, ditches off the coast of Key West, Florida. Crew rescued by USS Cromwell.

1951 – RAF Coastal Command Avro Lancaster GR.3, TX264, 'BS-D', of 120 Squadron RAF Kinloss, off-course in high winds and heavy overcast during a night-time navigation exercise between the Faroes and Rockall, crashes into Beinn Eighe's Triple Buttress at ~0200 hrs., just 15 feet (4.6 m) below the top of the 2,850-foot (870 m) westernmost gully of the buttress known as Coire Mhic Fhercair in the Scottish Highlands, killing all eight crew. Wreck not found until 17 March, crew remains not recovered until August. Due to remoteness of the crashsite the wreckage is still there.

1946 – The last operation for the Canadian 435 (T) squadron was from Down Ampney England. With 15,681 sorties, 28,792 operational hours and 2734 non-operational hours. They airlifted 27,460 tons of freight, 14,000 passengers and had 851 casualties.

1946 – The Royal Canadian Navy commissions its first aircraft carrier, HMCS Warrior (CVL 20), which the United Kingdom has transferred to Canada. She will serve until replaced by HMCS Magnificent (CVL 21) in 1948.

1945 – The first prototype of two of the experimental Cornelius XFG-1-CR fuel glider, 44-28059, crashes 3 miles W of Wilmington, Ohio during spin testing out of Clinton County Army Air Field, Ohio, killing test pilot Alfred Reitherman of the Spartan Aircraft Company which constructed the design. The fuel glider concept (to be towed behind bombers) is abandoned at the end of the war.

1908 – Henri Farman makes the first flight in his modified Voisin-Farman I-bis, the biplane built by Voisin brothers.

1889 – German Ferdinand von Zeppelin patents his “Navigable Balloon”.

1885 – Raoul Lufbery, American World War I pilot, was born (d. 1918). Lufbery was a French-American fighter pilot and flying ace in World War I. Because he served in both the French and later the United States Army Air Service in World War I, he is sometimes listed as a French ace and sometimes as an American ace, though all but one of his 17 combat victories came while flying in French units.

2011 – A U.S. Air Force MQ-1 Predator unmanned aerial vehicle overshoots the runway at Djibouti-Ambouli International Airport in Djibouti, Djibouti, and crashes into a fence. No one is injured. Investigators blame the accident on a melted throttle part and pilot confusion and inattention, as well as the inability of any remote pilot to react to cues such as wind rush or high engine pitch that would suggest to the pilot of a manned aircraft that the aircraft was approaching the runway too steeply and at too high a speed.[1]

2010 – Two United States Navy Boeing F/A-18E Super Hornet fighters from VFA-122 collided in mid-air at 2200 hrs., sending one crashing to the Nevada desert. One pilot ejected safely before his aircraft crashed near Naval Air Station Fallon and a second pilot landed the single-seat jet safely at Fallon.

1983 – No. 6 FTTU that had trained all Voodoo techs since 1961, is disbanded.

1982 – A Royal Swedish Air Force Saab Draken crashed into the Baltic, pilot killed.

1974 – A Sterling Airways Caravelle (OY-STK) caught fire while taxiing to depart in Tehran, Iran. The right main gear collapses, rupturing the fuel line, resulting in the deaths of 15 of the 96 people on the plane.

1972 – NASA announces Shuttle program. Since its inception in 1958, NASA has accomplished many great scientific and technological feats in air and space. NASA technology also has been adapted for many nonaerospace uses by the private sector. NASA remains a leading force in scientific research and in stimulating public interest in aerospace exploration, as well as science and technology in general. Perhaps more importantly, our exploration of space has taught us to view Earth, ourselves, and the universe in a new way.

1972 – Sterling Airways Flight 296 crashed near Kalba in the United Arab Emirates on a flight from Colombo to Copenhagen in Denmark with a stop over in Dubai. The Sud Aviation Caravelle was registration OY-STL. 112 passengers and crew died in the crash which was attributed to pilot error. It was the deadliest air disaster in the history of the United Arab Emirates.

1967 – First flight of the Sikorsky MH-53, SAR long-range version of the CH-53 A for the USAF.

1967 – Piedmont leases two Boeing 727 s to use pending delivery of their Boeing 737 s. This also marks the day that Piedmont places the Fairchild FH-227 into service.

1967 – Air Southwest is incorporated by Herb Kelleher and Rollin King. They would go on to grow it into low-cost juggernaut Southwest Airlines.

1964 – A Blue Angels pilot is killed during an attempted emergency landing at Apalach Airport near Apalachicola, Florida when his Grumman F-11A Tiger, experiences difficulties while transiting from West Palm Beach, Florida back to the Blue Angels home base at NAS Pensacola, Florida. Lt. George L. Neale, 29, who flew in the Number Four slot position of the diamond formation, was returning from a demonstration at West Palm Beach with one other of the six team jets and an Douglas R5D Skymaster support plane when he radios Tyndall Air Force Base, near Panama City, Florida, for emergency landing permission when he suffers mechanical problems S of Apalachicola. But, spotting the local airport, he attempts a landing there, ejecting on final approach at 1115 hrs. as the fighter comes down ~250 yards short of the runway. Although he clears the airframe at ~150–200 feet altitude, his chute does not have sufficient time to deploy and he is killed. He is survived by his wife Donna, of Pensacola, Florida, and his mother, Mrs. Katherine Neale, of Avalon, Pennsylvania. The Navy said that the cause of the accident is being investigated.

1962 – Flying Tiger Line Flight 739 was a Super Constellation propliner chartered by the United States military that disappeared over the Western Pacific Ocean. The aircraft was transporting 93 Army men and 3 South Vietnamese from Travis Air Force Base, California to Saigon, Vietnam. After refueling at Andersen Air Force Base, Guam, the Super Constellation was en route to Clark Air Base in the Philippines when it disappeared. All 107 aboard were declared missing and presumed dead.

1961 – Capt. Gary L. Herod of the Texas Air National Guard was killed when his Lockheed T-33A Shooting Star trainer crashed in a vacant field in suburban Houston, Texas. He was posthumously award the Distinguished Flying Cross for his heroism in not ejecting, but rather staying with his plane and guiding it to a vacant field saving the lives and homes of area residents.

1957 – A U. S. Navy ZPG-2 nonrigid airship sets a new unrefueled endurance record when it lands, having remained aloft for 264 hours (11 days) 12 min, beating the record set by the Graf Zeppelin in 1929.

1941 – Philippine Airlines begins service with a Beechcraft Model 18 NPC-54 with flights from Manila to Baguio.

1940 – During the second world war the British Commonwealth air training plan was Canada’s largest contribution to the war effort. On this date, the first trainees were taken on, and within a year the BCATP had 77 training facilities operating across the country. At its peak the program had 97 schools, and was graduating 3000 flyers a month.

1938 – de Havilland D. H. 88 Comet racer G-ACSS begins a record-breaking flight from England to New Zealand and back for what some regard as the most notable success of the Comet’s achievement: a return flight time of 10 days 21 hours 22 min.

1932 – Alan Bean, American astronaut, was born. Bean was the fourth man to walk on the moon at the age of thirty-seven years in November 1969.

1918 – After an extensive conversion, HMS Furious re-enters service with the Royal Navy as the world’s first aircraft carrier with aircraft lifts (elevators).

1916 – The first Aero Squadron begins operations with Gen. John J. Pershing in a punitive expedition against Mexico and Pancho Villa.

2005 – A Regional Airlines Antonov An-24 aircraft carrying oil workers to Varandey, Russia crashed five kilometers from the runway. A mixture of bad weather and pilot error caused the crash. Twenty-six of the 45 passengers died as well as two of the seven crew members.

1997 – An McDonnell-Douglas F/A-18C Hornet makes hard landing on the deck of the USS John F. Kennedy at 1603 hrs. during work-ups in the Atlantic Ocean, off-center touch-down causing starboard undercarriage leg to collapse, aircraft arrested just before striking parked aircraft forward.

1969 – Viasa Flight 742, a McDonnell Douglas DC-9-30, crashes on takeoff from Maracaibo, Venezuela. All 84 passengers on board, plus 71 people on the ground were killed in the crash. At 155 people dead, it was the worst aviation disaster in history at that time.

1962 – Flying Tiger Line Flight 739, a Lockheed L-1049 Super Constellation chartered by the United States military, and carrying 96 American soldiers en route to South Vietnam, disappears over the western Pacific..

1960 – KLM opens its first intercontinental jet service, by Douglas DC-8 from Amsterdam to New York.

1954 – RAF de Havilland Mosquito TT.35, TH992, 'N-for-Norman', built at Hatfield as a B.35, and modified as a target-tug, of No. 2 APS at Sylt, on mission over the North Sea, loses starboard engine. While attempting to return to base the port engine overheats, pilot puts it down on the first available land, a beach on the island of Anrum, N of Heligoland, shearing off starboard engine and breaking fuselage into three pieces, but no post-crash fire. Pilot and Target Towing Operator (TTO) survive with minor injuries. Airframe believed to have been burnt where it came to rest.

1938 – (16-18) Italian aircraft based on Majorca carry out a heavy, round-the-clock bombing of Barcelona, conducting seventeen air raids at three-hour intervals. Making no attempt to strike military targets specifically, they hit all parts of the city, killing about 1,300 people and injuring about 2,000.

1932 – Walter Cunningham, American astronaut, was born. In 1968, Cunningham was the pilot for the lunar module in the Apollo 7 mission. he occupied the lunar module pilot seat for the eleven-day flight of Apollo 7.

1927 – The Portuguese Military Aviation seaplane Argos, piloted by Sarmento de Beires, makes the first night aerial crossing of the South Atlantic, taking off from Portuguese Guinea and landing in Brazil.

1911 – The first certificate of airworthiness awarded to an airplane in Britain is signed by Mervyn O’Gorman, superintendent of the Balloon Factory at Farnborough, covering the Farman III Type Militaire purchased by the British Army during the second half of 1910.

1907 – Built for Leon Delagrange and pilot Charles Voisin, the Voisin-Delagrandge biplane makes its first flight from Bagatelle, France, achieving a height of 13ft. and a distance of 260ft.

1905 – (16-20) Professional balloon-parachute jumper Daniel Maloney is launched by balloon in a tandem-wing glider designed by John Montgomery and makes three successful flights at Aptos, California, the highest launch being at 3,000 feet with an 18 min descent to a predetermined landing location.

2007 – UTAir Flight 471 crashes short of the runway in Amara, Russia, while trying to land in poor weather. The Tupolev Tu-134 (RA-65021) hits the ground 1000ft short and rolls onto its back in flames, resulting in the deaths of 6 passengers among the 57 on board. Poor planning and handling of the foggy conditions brings charges of negligence onto the pilots for which the Captain and First Officer received 6 and 2 years respectively.

2005 – A judge has found millionaire Sikh businessman Ripudaman Singh Malik and sawmill worker Ajaib Singh Bagri not guilty of conspiracy and murder in the 1985Air India bombing that killed 329 people.

2001 – A SAL Express Beechcraft 1900C (S9-CAE) crashes into a mountain in Angola during heavy rainfall, with only one survivor among the 17 on board.

2000 – AeroPerlas de Havilland DHC-6 Twin Otter (HP-1267APP) crashes into a hill in Kuna Yala, Panama, killing all 10 on the aircraft while on a flight from Panama City to Puerto Obaldia.

1996 – A Navy pilot safely ejected from his McDonnell-Douglas T-45A Goshawk, training jet, BuNo 163645, 'B 245', of TW-2,[341] during an emergency landing at Cecil Field Naval Air Station, Jacksonville, Florida. The pilot, who was not injured, notified officials that two tires on the jet had blown out during take-off from the aircraft carrier USS John F. Kennedy, off Jacksonville. According to officials he had planned to land the aircraft at Cecil Field without the wheels, but ejected after the jet first made contact with the runway. After he ejected, the plane flipped over. The pilot was assigned to Training Squadron 22, of Kingsville, Texas. The squadron was doing routine training flights off the carrier and onto land.

1995 – An Intercontinental de Aviacion McDonnell Douglas DC-9-15 (HK-3564X) burns in Barranquilla, Coloumbia. Though the aircraft is completed destroyed in the fire, which begins after a short-circuit in the aft lavatory, all passengers survive.

1994 – Iranian Air Force C-130 shootdown occurred when an Iranian Air Force C-130E military transport aircraft, carrying Iranian embassy personnel from Moscow to Tehran, was shot down by Armenian military forces near the city of Stepanakert in Nagorno-Karabakh, an area which had been under armed conflict since 1988. The 32 people (19 passengers and 13 crew) on board were killed in the crash.

1988 – Avianca Flight 410, a Boeing 727, crashes into terrain near Cúcuta, Colombia after takeoff as a result of pilot error. All 142 people on board die.

1985 – Southwest Airlines began flights between St. Louis and Chicago.

1979 – Aeroflot Flight 1691, a Tupolev Tu-104, crashes near Vnukovo Airport while attempting to make an emergency landing after a fire alarm is reported, killing 58 of 119 on board.

1970 – Eastern Air Lines Shuttle Flight 1320, carrying passengers from Newark to Boston was hijacked around 7:30 P. M. by John J. Divivo who was armed with a .38 caliber revolver. Captain Robert Wilbur Jr., 35, a former Air Force pilot who had only been promoted to captain six months prior, was shot in his arm by the suicidal hijacker. With a .38 slug in his arm and bleeding profusely, he flew his aircraft safely to a landing while talking to the tower, telling them his copilot was shot (but not himself) and needed an ambulance. His copilot, First Officer James Hartley, 31, was shot without warning by Divivo and collapsed. Divivo then turned the gun on the captain, causing his arm injury. Despite being fatally wounded Hartley recovered sufficiently to rip the gun from Divivo’s hand, and shoot the would-be hijacker three times before lapsing into unconsciousness, and eventually death. Although wounded and slumped between the seats, Divivo arose and began clawing at Captain Wilbur, attempting to force a crash. Wilbur hit Divivo over the head with the gun he had retrieved from the center console. The pilot was able to land the plane safely at Logan International Airport, and the hijacker was arrested immediately. On November 1, 1970, DiVivo hanged himself while awaiting trial at Charles Street Jail.

1957 – The official plane of the President of the Philippines, a Philippine Air Force C-47A-75-DL Skytrain, 42-100925, c/n 19388, named "Mt. Pinatubo", crashes on the slopes of Mount Manunggal, 35 km (21.9 mls) NW of Cebu, Philippines, at ~0140 hrs. killing Philippine President Ramon Magsaysay and 24 others. The crash is blamed on metal fatigue - spindle shaft of the starboard engine carburetor snapped causing power loss; one journalist on board survives. See also 1957 Cebu Douglas C-47 crash. This aircraft had been stored at Norton AFB, California from ~ 14 February 1951 prior to going to the Philippine Air Force.

1954 – Test pilot Joe Lynch is killed in the crash of the first North American TF-86F Sabre, 52-5016, when he performed a slow-roll on take-off at Edwards AFB, California.

1949 – The Sunkist Lady flies an endurance record of 1,008 hours and 2 min or just a couple of minutes over 42 days. The flight was the duo’s fourth attempt at breaking the 726-hour record set in 1939 by Long Beach pilots Wes Carroll and Clyde Scliepper. Their first three attempts failed because of mechanical problems. The plan was for the Lady to travel from Fullerton to Miami and back. The Lady would then stay aloft over Southern California until the record had been broken. At airports along the route, the ground crew would land, board Willys Jeepsters, and race along the runway while the Sunkist Lady passed low overhead. Three-gallon cans of gasoline and food would then be passed up to the pilots.

1948 – Lt. Roger L. Miller, flying a Marine Corps Vought F4U Corsair, crashes into the sea during dive bombing practice. His body was not recovered. He was the father of Roger L. Miller Jr. and his second son was born the following day. His name was Stephen. He was the husband of Genevieve (Slattery) Miller.

1945 – Following an afternoon attack by two Arado Ar 234B Blitzs of 6./KG76 on the U.S. Army forces crossing the Rhine at Remagen, Uffw. Pohlmann is killed when his Arado, WNr.140180, is destroyed in a crash-landing at Burg following an engine failure.

1937 – Amelia Earhart flies a Lockheed Electra from Oakland, California, to Wheeler Field, Territory of Hawaii, on the first leg of an attempted circumnavigation of the world, making the flight in 15 hours 47 min.

1936 – Smoking in an airplane’s toilet is as serious an offense as smoking at school. An Imperial Airways passenger, caught red-handed while lighting up against airline regulations in a Handley Page HP.42 en route from Paris to London, is fined £10 in Craydon court, England.

1936 – Ken Mattingly, American astronaut, was born. Rear Admiral, USN (retired) flew on the Apollo 16, STS-4, and STS-51-C missions. He had been scheduled to fly on Apollo 13, but was held back due to concerns about a potential illness (which he did not contract).

1935 – German authorities make the color-coding at vital aircraft parts obligatory; red for fire circuit-breakers, green for temperature regulators, yellow for throttles and brown for hydraulic circuits.

1930 – James Irwin, American astronaut, was born (d. 1991). Irwin was a member of the Apollo 15 mission in 1971 and the eighth man to walk on the Moon.

1924 – The four Douglas World Cruisers (DWC) built for the U. S. Army Air Service leave Santa Monica on the first leg of their flight around the world. The DWC was a modified version of the DT-2 torpedo bomber the company had built for the Navy.

1921 – The first U. S. Marine airman to serve in the Pacific arrives on Guam with responsibility for supporting U. S. land and sea forces in the region. There, 10 pilots and 90 enlisted men operate seaplanes on reconnaissance duty as Flight L, Fourth Squadron, for 10 years.

1914 – A new system identified aircraft with one letter indicating aircraft class and a second letter defining aircraft type. Existing aircraft were redesignated alphabetically into the new system, with one exception. Since all landplanes were converted into hydroplanes before the new 1914 system, the AL designation was not assigned.

1911 – U. S. Navy Lt. John Rodgers reports to the Wright Co. at Dayton, Ohio for flying instructions. On March 9, the Wrights had offered to train one Navy pilot if that service bought a Wright flying machine at a cost $5,000. The conditional offer was later replaced by one that provided unconditional free training for one would-be Navy pilot.

2010 – Aviastar-TU Flight 1906, operated by Tupolev Tu-204 RA-64011 crashed on approach to Domodedovo International Airport, Moscow. The aircraft was written off, the first hull loss for Aviastar and the first of a Tu-204.

1999 – An ALIANSA Columbia Douglas DC-3 (HK-337) disappears on a flight from Cucuta to El Yopal. After four days, the crash site is found on a hill, along with its 8 deceased passengers and crew.

1999 – American Airlines announces their purchasing of the naming right of the American Airlines Center arena in Dallas, Texas for a mere $195 million.

1998 – A Formosa Airlines Saab 340 (B-12255) crashes into the sea, killing all 13 aboard. The Captain decides to depart, despite the known failure of the right-hand main bus. This has a domino effect on several systems, including navigation and flight instruments. With that, the right engine anti-ice start bleed valve being in the open position lead to a 13% torque split between the two engines and a yaw-effect when not compensated for. Poor weather conditions and pilot fatigue (the Captain flew several flights throughout the day already) led to spatial disorientation. Add it all up and the result is a right bank after departure that the pilots do not notice until it is unrecoverable.

1969 – In Operation Breakfast, 48 U. S. Air Force B-52 Stratofortresses bomb the Fishhook in Cambodia in an attack on what the Americans believe to be the general Communist headquarters within Cambodia. It is the first event in Operation Menu, the secret 14-month-long American bombing of Cambodia targeting North Vietnamese Army sanctuaries there.

1960 – A Northwest Orient Airlines Boeing 377 Stratocruiser makes a 300-foot (91-meter) emergency dive to avoid colliding with two Air National Guard jets over Lansing, Michigan. Among the passengers is Morris Chalfen, producer of the Holiday on Ice skating shows, whose wife and three children had died the previous day on Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 710.

1958 – Austrian Airlines takes off on its first flight, with a Vickers Viscount from Vienna to London with a stop in Zurich.

1958 – Test pilot Leo J. "Pete" Colapietro bails out of Douglas F4D Skyray during routine test flight over the Pacific Ocean which goes out of control, ejects at ~650 mph (1,050 km/h), suffers right arm broken in two places, fractured pelvis, two cracked vertebrae, and a dislocated shoulder. Parachute deploys automatically, however, and pilot is rescued from the water after 45 minutes by a helicopter and a rescue launch. He remains in hospital for over six weeks.

1957 – Christer Fuglesang, Swedish ESA astronaut, was born. Fuglesang was the first Swede and the first Nordic citizen in space aboard the STS-116 Shuttle mission on 10 December 2006.

1953 – Brig Gen Richard E. Ellsworth, commander of the 28th Strategic Reconnaissance Wing, is killed in the crash of Convair RB-36H-25-CF Peacemaker, 51-13721, he was co-piloting on a 25-hour journey as part of a simulated combat mission flying from Lajes, Azores back to Rapid City Air Force Base, South Dakota. As part of the exercise, the bomber was observing radio silence and had switched off their radar guidance, flying via celestial navigation. They had planned to fly low over the ocean, steadily increasing to higher altitudes before reaching the mountainous countryside of Newfoundland. Late into the night, the aircraft struck bad weather and went off course, reaching Newfoundland 90 minutes earlier than planned. At 0410 hrs. at a hill near Burgoyne's Cove, inland from Nut Cove, Trinity Bay, Newfoundland, with sleet, fog, freezing drizzle, and visibility estimated at less than 1⁄8-mile (0.20 km), the plane struck an 896-foot (273 m) hill at 800 feet (240 m) with a ground speed of 202 knots (374 km/h). The aircraft's propellers severed the tops of pine trees while the plane's left wing hit the ground, tore off, and spilled fuel. The rest of the plane impacted some thousand feet further. The impact and subsequent fire from the plane's fuel tanks scorched an 8-foot-deep (2.4 m) trench in the countryside. Loggers on a nearby hill spotted the fireball and alerted rescuers, but all 23 on board were killed on impact. Much of the wreckage remains at the crash site. That same night, a Boeing SB-29-70-BW Superfortress, 44-69982, search and rescue plane of the 52d Air Rescue Squadron, 6th Air Rescue Group, based at Harmon Air Force Base, Newfoundland, was sent out to assist in search efforts. It disappeared shortly before landing, crashing into St. Georges Bay, a few miles from the runway, killing 11. Wreckage never found. In the aftermath of the B-36 crash, an accident investigation board recommended new procedures to scan more frequently for approaching high terrain and to climb to safer altitudes before approaching within 200 miles (320 km) of a water-land boundary. President Dwight Eisenhower personally went to the Rapid City base and renamed it Ellsworth Air Force Base, to honor the general

1952 – Two USAF F-84 Thunderjets land in Neubiberg, Germany after the longest sustained jet flight; they flew 2,800 miles from the USA in 4 hours 48 min, without refueling.

1945 – The Douglas XB2D-1, prototype of the AD Skyraider makes its first flight.

1942 – The first German A-4 flight-test model, ("Launch Aggregate 1"), completed 25 February 1942, but which slips out of its "corset" after being fully tanked at Test Stand VII at Peenemünde due to contraction of the fuselage from the cold propellants, falling 2 meters, smashing three fins, and coming to rest on the rim of the engine nozzle; repaired and renamed Versuchsmuster 1 (V1: Experimental Type 1), at 2345 hrs., this date, the rocket fails during a test firing with flame bursting through the side just above the engine, wrecking the steam generator and many lines on board, with the engine shutting off automatically. Leaks in the fuel and oxidizer lines caused by vibration and stress are determined to have let an explosive mixture to have built up over the head of the motor and the rocket is junked for parts without any launch attempt. Albert Speer witnesses this test failure.

1942 – No. 413 (Coastal) Squadron flew from the Shetland Isles to a new base on Ceylon.

1939 – The Boeing Model 307 Stratoliner prototype crashes, killing all 10 people on board. The accident results in the formation of an expanded aerodynamic research group headed by Eddie Allen, with more emphasis on pre-flight testing.

1938 – Only seven months after its first flight, the prototype Heinkel He 115 V1 begins a series of flights breaking eight seaplane speed records by carrying loads between 1,100 lb. and 4,400 lb. over distances of 1,000 km (621 miles) and 2,000 km (1,242 miles) at an average speed of 204 mph. The He 115 is the Luftwaffe’s most successful seaplane. The He 115 was developed as a torpedo-bomber, mine-laying and reconnaissance aircraft, during the mid-thirties by Ernst Heinkel A. G. The two-engined all-metal mid-wing twin-floatplane possessed exceptional water handling qualities, good stability and an outstanding performance.

1913 – Werner Mölders German WWII fighter pilot, was born (d. 1941). Mölders was a German Luftwaffe World War II fighter ace. He was credited with 101 victories in WWII as well as 14 victories in the Spanish civil war. He was flying as a passenger in a He-111 from the Crimea to Germany in November 1941 to attend the funeral of his superior and friend, Ernst Udet. Attempting to land at Breslau during a thunderstorm, the aircraft crashed. Mölders and the pilot were killed.

1906 – Traian Vuia flies his "Vuia 1" in powered flight without headwind or catapult assisted takeoff. Not launched from a height.

2010 – A Turkish Army TAI/AgustaWestland T-129 (registration CSX81723) helicopter prototype lost its tail rotor at 15,000 ft (4,600 m). height at 16:30. Two people on board survived.

2009 – Quito B200 King Air crash: A Beechcraft B200 King Air of the Ecuadorian Air Force crashes at Guápulo while attempting to land at Mariscal Sucre International Airport in thick fog, killing all five people on board and a further two on the ground.

2007 – Airbus A380 makes first flights to the United States, with one touching down in New York at John F. Kennedy International Airport and another in California at Los Angeles International Airport.

2003 – MH-53M Pave Low 67-14993 of 20th SOS carrying special forces crashes in southern Iraq. No one is killed. The craft was later destroyed to prevent capture.[5]

2001 – Comair Flight 5054, an Embraer EMB 120 Brasilia, experiences severe atmospheric icing in flight near West Palm Beach, Florida. After a rapid loss of altitude, the crew regains control of the aircraft and makes an emergency landing at West Palm Beach Airport without injury to any of the 27 people on board. The plane suffers permanent deformation of its stabilizer and elevator.

1990 – An McDonnell-Douglas F-15 Eagle from the 3rd Wing stationed at Elmendorf AFB, Alaska accidentally fired an AIM-9M Sidewinder missile at another F-15. The damaged aircraft was able to make an emergency landing; it was subsequently repaired and returned to service.

1982 – Boeing Boeing KC-135A-BN Stratotanker, 58-0031, assigned to the 108th Air Refueling Squadron, 126th Air Refueling Wing, Illinois Air National Guard, crashed near Greenwood, Illinois. The KC-135 was returning from K.I. Sawyer AFB, Michigan to its home base at Chicago O'Hare International Airport when an explosion occurred at 13,700 feet due to an overheated fuel pump. All four crew members and 23 passengers in the KC-135 were killed.

1969 – The first scheduled jet air service inside the Arctic Circle begins as Nordair inaugurates a weekly return service between Montreal, Canada and Resolution Bay, Cornwallis Island, Canada.

1965 – Final Hawker Siddeley P.1127 prototype (of six), XP984, first with new swept wing with leading edge extensions and steel cold nozzles, first flown in October 1963, is damaged in a forced landing at Thorney Island. Repaired.

1964 – Geraldine Mock, in a Cessna 180, becomes the first woman to fly around the world.

1961 – Eleventh Lockheed U-2A, 56-6684, Article 351, delivered to the CIA 18 May 1956, modified to U-2C by July 1959; returning from a night celestial nav training sortie, crashes on landing at Taoyuan Air Base, Taiwan, killing Republic Of China Air Force pilot Chih Yao Hua. During a touch-and-go landing, he applied power but lost control, the aircraft veering left, crashing and exploding. Unit was the CIA's Detachment H, ROCAF 35th Squadron.

1954 – A USAF Fairchild C-119F-FA Flying Boxcar, 51-7993, c/n 10732, of the 774th Troop Carrier Squadron, Ardmore Air Force Base, Oklahoma, en route from Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama, to Mitchel Air Force Base, Long Island, New York, crashes into a rain-swept cornfield 19 miles S of Annapolis, Maryland, killing all 18 on board. It had departed Bolling Air Force Base, Washington, D.C., after refueling at 2212 hrs. A watch found in the wreckage had stopped at 2229 hrs. A spokesman at Bolling said that there were twelve passengers and six crewmen aboard. There were 11 Air Force personnel, five U.S. Navy, and one Marine on board. Witnesses reported that the aircraft was on fire before the crash and appeared to have exploded. The plane grazed the edge of a wooded area just off Maryland Route 2 before it impacted. Twisted wreckage and bodies were strewn over a ten-acre area. A heavy rain aided firemen in preventing the fire from getting out of hand. A detachment of sailors and Marines from the U. S. Naval Academy at Annapolis stood guard over the area as a group of investigators from Andrews Air Force Base, Maryland, examined the wreckage for clues to the cause of the tragedy.

1946 – Col. George Vernon Holloman, (1902–1946), a native of Rich Square, North Carolina, aviation instrument inventor and early experimenter with guided missiles, is killed in a Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress accident on Formosa, while en route from China to the Philippines. Holloman had received the DFC for conducting the first instrument-only landing of an aircraft. Alamogordo Army Air Base, New Mexico, renamed Holloman AFB, 13 January 1948.

1921 – The Douglas Cloudster broke the Pacific Coast altitude record by climbing 19,160 feet. The Cloudster was the first Douglas product. It was also the first airplane in history to airlift a useful load exceeding its own weight.

1912 – The first of the U. S. Signal Corps Scout series capable of meeting a specification issued February 8, 1912, the S. C. No.8 is delivered to Augusta, Georgia by Curtiss pilot Charles F. Walsh. It finally passes all tests at College Park, Maryland in May with Lincoln Beachey at the controls.

1910 – Orville Wright opens the first Wright Flying School in Montgomery, Ala., on a site that will later become Maxwell AFB.

1909 – The International Aero and Motor-Boat Exhibition opens in London. Among the exhibits is a Wright airplane for sale at $7,000.

2011 – An airstrike by the international coalition against a Libyan government military ground convoy approaching Misrata destroys 14 tanks, 20 armored personnel carriers, and several trucks filled with ammunition, killing at least 14 Libyan government soldiers.[1]

2009 – Emirates Flight 407, an Airbus A340-500 flying from Melbourne Tullamarine Airport to Dubai International Airport has a tailstrike during take off and returns to Melbourne Airport with no fatalities.

2008 – Deceased: Ann Baumgartner, 89, first American woman to fly a jet.

1991 – A U. S. Air Force F-15 C Eagle of the 36th Tactical Fighter Wing uses an AIM-9 Sidewinder air-to-air missile to shoot down an Iraqi Air Force Sukhoi Su-22 (NATO reporting name “Fitter”) which is violating the post-Gulf War Coalition prohibition against Iraqi military flights.

1991 – Cuban Air Force pilot Major Orestes Lorenzo Perez defects in his Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-23BN to Naval Air Station Key West, Florida on a training mission. U.S. fighters never scramble to intercept, and embarrassed military authorities say that "hardware and software problems" with the radar net contributed to the failure. On 19 December 1992 he returns to Cuba in a borrowed small, twin-engined 1961 Cessna 310, landing on a well known bridge along the coastal highway east of Havana in Northern Matanzas Province at an agreed time. His wife Victoria and their two sons, Reyneil, 11, and Alejandro, 6, are already waiting on his order delivered through a messenger earlier. Orestes Lorenzo Perez picks up his family and manages a successful safe return to Miami.

1982 – In the 1982 Garuda Fokker F28 crash, the Fokker F28 overruns the runway in bad weather at Tanjung Karang-Branti Airport; all 27 are killed when the aircraft bursts into flames.

1969 – In the 1969 Aswan Ilyushin Il-18 crash, a United Arab Airlines flight crashes while attempting to land at Aswan International Airport. 100 of the 105 passengers and crew on board were killed.

1948 – 1948 Tinker Air Force Base tornadoes: Two large tornadoes strike Tinker Air Force Base, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, damaging or destroying a large number of aircraft including at least two Douglas C-54 Skymasters, a Douglas C-47 Skytrain, and many Boeing B-29 Superfortresses stored from World War II.

1945 – Lockheed test pilot Tony LeVier is forced to bail out of first Lockheed XP-80 prototype, 44-83021, named "Gray Ghost", of the 4144th AAF Base Unit, Muroc Army Air Field, California, after catastrophic turbine blade failure slices off tail, pilot coming down on Highway 99 near Rosamond, California, breaking his back and side-lining him for six months

1943 – During the evening, aircraft drop naval mines for the first time in the Pacific, when 42 U. S. Navy and U. S. Marine Corps TBF Avengers from Henderson Field, Guadalcanal, mine the harbor at Kahili, Bougainville, during a diversionary raid on Kahili Airfield by 18 U. S. Army Air Forces B-17 Flying Fortresses. The following evening, 40 Avengers carry out another mining operation at Kahili during a diversionary raid by 21 U. S. Army Air Forces bombers on the airfield.

1942 – The Luftwaffe’s Fliegerkorps II further escalates its bombing campaign against Malta as truly massive air raids begin with a goal of forcing the island’s antiaircraft artillery to exhaust its ammunition and personnel, followed by large attacks on airfields and aircraft on the ground, and finally the destruction of naval forces, dockyards, and other military installations.

1937 – An attempted round-the-world flight by female aviator Amelia Earhart ends dramatically when the starboard tire of her Lockheed Electra airliner bursted during take-off from Honolulu, Hawaii. Because of damage, the expedition was temporary abandoned. The first leg from Oakland, California to Honolulu on March 17 was made in 16 hours, setting an east/west record.

2013 – Two helicopters – a Eurocopter AS332 Super Puma and a Eurocopter EC 155 – of the German Federal Police participating in a large-scale training exercise collide in snowy weather in front of the Olympic Stadium in Berlin and crash, with one helicopter apparently landing on top of the other and debris striking bystanders. One pilot dies and several other people are injured.

2012 – A United States Air Force F-16CG crashed near Kunsan Air Base, South Korea. The pilot ejected but was injured.

1991 – Two US Navy Lockheed P-3C Orion anti-submarine patrol planes are lost during a training mission off the San Diego coast. The crash occurs in a storm 60 miles SW of San Diego at 0230 hrs., as one plane flies to relieve the other, which had been airborne for seven hours. Search-and-rescue workers discover wreckage from the downed planes but all 27 crewmen are lost. The two aircraft were assigned to Patrol Squadron 50, based at Naval Air Station Moffett Field in Mountain View.

1987 – Dean Martin's son Dean Paul Martin (formerly Dino of the 60s "teeny-bopper" rock group Dino, Desi & Billy) dies when his McDonnell Douglas F-4C-25-MC Phantom II fighter, 64-0923, of the 196th Tactical Fighter Squadron, 184th Tactical Fighter Wing, crashes into San Gorgonio Mountain in the San Bernardino Mountains after take off from March Air Force Base, during a snow storm while flying with the California Air National Guard. His Weapon Systems Officer (WSO), Ramon Ortiz is also KWF. Wreckage found four days later just below summit.

1983 – First all female USN aircrew to conduct an operation mission. The flight was conducted in a Grumman C-1 Trader from VRC-30 and ended with an arrested carrier landing on USS Ranger. Lt Elizabeth Toedt, Ltjg Cheryl A Martin, AD3 Gina Greterman, ADAN Robin Banks were the crew members.

1965 – Second (of five) Ling-Temco-Vought XC-142A VTOL transports, 62-5922, crashes at the Vought facility at NAS Dallas, Texas, while flying at 24 mph at an altitude of 10 to 20 feet, striking the ground first with the port wingtip, then with the starboard wingtip, before making a hard landing. The wing at the time was at an angle of 45 degrees with the flaps deflected at 60 degrees. Wingtips, ailerons and outboard engine tailpipes are damaged, but crew is uninjured. Recirculated propwash airflow caused by combination of wing tilt and flap deflection produced large erratic aerodynamic disturbances and loss of directional stability. Aircraft is repaired.

1958 – Canada’s era of supersonic flight began when pilot Jan Zurakowski took off from Malton Airport near Toronto in an Avro CF-105 Arrow for a 35-minute maiden flight. Less than a month later, Zurakowski flew the Arrow at Mach 1.5 at an altitude of 50,000 ft (15,000 m). In spite of the aircraft’s early promise, the Canadian government scrapped the project before the Arrow could be put into production.

1955 – Announcement that Dew Line radar defensive system to be built in Northern Canada and Alaska.

1952 – A USAF North American B-45 Tornado crashes shortly after departure from Reese AFB, Texas, on the return leg of a cross-country training flight to its home base at Langley AFB, Virginia, from Mather AFB, California, killing all four crew. The bomber came down 22 miles (35 km) NW of Paducah, Texas in Cottle County, in a severe dust storm. The wife of a railroad worker, Mrs. I. R. Hull, saw the plane plunge to earth near the small community of Narcisso and notified a funeral home at Paducah. It was several hours before searching parties reached the scene. KWF were pilot 1st Lt. Billy M. Reynolds, 26, Cleveland, Mississippi; Lt. Winfred R. Weller, Denver, Colorado; Cpl. Henry G. Geiger, 19, Cedar Rapids, Iowa; and Pfc. Thomas F. Penninger, 21, gunner, son of Mr. and Mrs. Harlon M. Penninger, Lubbock, Texas.

1927 – John Rodgers Airport (the future Honolulu International Airport) is dedicated in Honolulu, Territory of Hawaii.

1924 – Martin GMB (Glenn Martin Bomber), USAAS 64308, ex-Post Office (possibly 202), ends cross-country flight to Parris Island, South Carolina, noses over when it hits unmarked ditch on the airfield. Pilot 1st Lt. (later Lieutenant General) Harold L. George reported later that "I also remember being told that it (Parris Island) was an exceptional landing field. It was except that the information had failed to inform me that the Marines had dug a trench across the field. This was not indicated by markers, or in any other way. I didn't know the trench was there until we stopped quickly." Airframe had only logged 99 hours when it was written off.

1916 – Captain-Commandant of the United States Coast Guard Ellsworth P. Bertholf orders Coast Guard experimentation with the use of aircraft and directs Third Lieutenant Elmer F. Stone to begin flight training. It is the birth of U. S. Coast Guard aviation. The unit, made up of American volunteer pilots is later renamed the Lafayett Escadrille.

1913 – Heinz “Pritzl” Bär, German fighter pilot, was born (d. 1957). Bar was a WWII fighter pilot and had a total of 221 victories, fighting in all the major German theaters of war, including the Western Front, Mediterranean and Eastern front. He was shot down 18 times during the course of flying about 1000 combat missions.

1910 – Harry Houdini achieves one of the first powered flights in Australia.

1908 – Henri Farman covers 6,275 ft (1,913 m) in 3 min 47 seconds in his Voisin-Farman No.1 bis at Issy-les-Moulineaux. Henri Farman was a key figure in the early days of European aviation and established several aviation “firsts. ” Born of English parents in Paris in 1874, he first raced bicycles and automobiles. He was involved in a serious auto accident and turned to aviation instead. In 1907, he ordered his first biplane from Gabriel Voisin, a French planebuilder.

1877 – Maurice Farman (1877-1964), aviation pioneer and manufacturer, is born in Paris, France. 1908, he made the first circular flight of more than 1 mi (1.6 km) with his brother, Henri.

2003 – During the 2003 invasion of Iraq, two Royal Navy Westland Sea King ASaC7 AEW helicopters, XV650, 'CU-182', and XV704, 'R-186', collide in mid-air five miles (8 km) from their aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal while one had been leaving on a mission as the other returned from the same operation. One American exchange pilot on board, a former E-2C Hawkeye pilot formerly from Carrier Airborne Early Warning Squadron One One Five, was killed.

2003 – Two Royal Navy ASaC.7 Sea Kings XV650 'CU-182' and XV704 'R-186' of 849 Squadron/A Flight collide over the Persian Gulf, killing six British crew members and one American.[9]

1998 – Philippine Airlines Flight 137, an Airbus A320, overshoots the end of the runway while landing at Bacolod City in the Philippines, plowing through several houses. None of the passengers were harmed, but three people on the ground were killed and several more injured.

1992 – USAir Flight 405, a Fokker F-28, crashes on takeoff from New York because of ice buildup. Twenty-seven of the 51 people on board are killed.

1991 – A 36th Tactical Fighter Wing F-15 C again downs an Iraqi Su-22 with a Sidewinder. Another Su-22 accompanying the first one crashes while maneuvering to evade the approaching F-15C.

1989 – An Antonov An-225 sets a total of 106 world and class records during a 3 h 30 min flight carrying a Buran orbiter. Its total weight at take-off was 508,200 kilograms (1,120,400 lb).

1984 – Pacific Western Airlines Flight 501, a Boeing 737, suffers an uncontained engine failure during takeoff from Calgary; all passengers and crew were safely evacuated, but the plane burns to the ground.

1982 – In the Iran-Iraq War, Iran launches its Fath al-Mubin offensive. Until it winds down a week to ten days later, Iraqi and Iranian planes and helicopters support the ground forces involved, but are generally ineffective. Iraqi Air Force fighters fly up to 150 sorties a day.[10]

1965 – Avianca Flight 676, a Douglas C-47 (DC-3) crashes into Sugar Loaf Mountain shortly after departure from Bogota-Eldorado Airport in Colombia at an elevation of 7,200 feet (2,200 m). All 29 on the aircraft are killed due to the pilot continuing to fly by (VFR) Visual Flight Rules in unfavorable conditions.

1955 – A United States Navy Douglas DC-6 hits a cliff in Honolulu, killing 66. It is the worst air disaster in the history of Hawaii.

1952 – A Douglas DC-6 (PH-TBJ) being operated by KLM Royal Dutch Airlines crashes into a forest while navigating its approach to Frankfurt International Aircraft in Germany. There are 3 survivors among the 47 on board.

1952 – A Maritime Central Airways Douglas C-47 disappears two hours after departing St. John’s Airport in Newfoundland, Canada with four people on board. The wreckage is found almost a year and a half later on August 27, 1953.

1950 – ATwo North American F-86A Sabre fighter jets attached to the 81st Fighter Group at Kirtland AFB, New Mexico, crash in Emmons, West Virginia, just outside of Charleston. They had landed in Charleston the previous day due to low fuel on a cross-country flight. After fuel was delivered from Wright-Patterson AFB, Dayton, Ohio, the pilots, Lt. Col. A. F. Reinhardt, 43, and Capt. George Evans, 28, took off this date in morning marginal weather with low clouds and rain. A few minutes later, both aircraft nose-dived into the side yard of local landowner. Both pilots KWF.

1945 – USS Enterprise (CV-6) is damaged by a flight deck fire caused by American antiaircraft fire, and Task Force 58 retires from Japanese waters. During its strikes on Kyushu and the Inland Sea it has claimed 528 Japanese aircraft destroyed; Japan admits to 163 aircraft lost in air-to-air combat and additional Japanese planes destroyed on the ground.

1942 – The Second Battle of Sirte takes place between Royal Navy and Italian forces in the Mediterranean. The Italians fail to prevent a convoy of four Allied cargo ships from arriving at Malta, and an attack by Italian Savoia-Marchetti SM.79 torpedo bombers is ineffective.

1938 – The Nationalist Aragon Offensive resumes. Bombing and strafing German, Italian, and Spanish Nationalist aircraft play a large role in terrorizing and routing Republican ground forces for the remainder of the offensive.

1937 – Late in life Mary Russell, Duchess of Bedford, became interested in aviation that she claimed gave her some relief from her constant tinnitus, although she eventually became totally deaf. On 2 August 1929, she departed on a record-breaking flight of 10,000 miles (16,000 km) from Lympne Airport to Karachi (then in India) and return to Croydon Airport in eight days. She was accompanied in her single-engined Fokker F.VII (G-EBTS, named “Spider”) by her personal pilot C. D. Barnard and mechanic Robert Little. On 8 April 1930 she made her first solo flight, in her DH.60G Moth (G-AAAO). On 10 April 1930 she embarked on a record-breaking flight from Lympne Airport to Cape Town, in the “Spider”, flying 9,000 miles (14,000 km) in 100 flying hours over 10 days, accompanied by C. D. Barnard. The duchess died in 1937, aged 71, after leaving Woburn Abbey in a DH.60GIII Moth Major (G-ACUR), that crashed into the North Sea off Great Yarmouth; her body was never recovered. 1937 – Spanish Nationalist leader Francisco Franco orders his National Aviation (Aviación Nacional) force to begin a bombing campaign against the Basques in northern Spain.

1935 – Prototype Grumman XF3F-1, BuNo 9727 (1st), c/n 257, company model G.11, disintegrates when pulled sharply out of a terminal velocity dive, the tenth and final such test in six flights, killing pilot Jimmy Collins. G-forces in this dive estimated at 12-13, wrenching wings off, engine torn from mount. 9727 serial applied to three Grumman prototypes, two of which crashed.

1926 – On its seventh test flight during tests at Taura Beach, Yokosuka, Japan, the Kaibo Gikai KB experimental flying boat is seen in a glide with both engines stopped, which steepens until it strikes the water in a near-vertical attitude, killing all four crew. Cause attributed to a malfunction of the flight control system.

2010 – Two Royal Air Force BAE Hawks, members of the Red Arrows aerobatic team were involved in a midair collision in airshow at Heraklion Crete. Pilot of one ejected and received moderate injuries. The aircraft crashed in the airfield and was destroyed. The second aircraft landed safely in Heraklion Airport.

2010 – A Turkish Army Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk came down on the outskirts of Wardak town in Afghanistan at around 10:30. The crash happened as two Turkish helicopters were attempting to land at a Turkish-run Provincial Reconstruction Team.

2009 – FedEx Express Flight 80, a McDonnell Douglas MD-11 flying from Guangzhou, China crashes at Tokyo Narita International Airport, Japan; both the captain and the co-pilot of the plane are killed.

2009 – A German Air Force Panavia Tornado PA-200, 45+37, from Jagdbombergeschwader 33 crashes on the runway at Büchel Air Force Base, Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. The aircraft, on a routine night training exercise, suffers extensive damage during the incident which occurs in high winds and rain, the two crew ejecting safely.

2007 – Mogadishu TransAVIAexport Airlines Il-76 crash: A Transaviaexport Airlines Ilyushin IL-76 (EW-78849) is shot down after one of three missiles fired at it hits its wing after departure from Mogadishu Airport in Somalia, killing all 11 occupants. The aircraft had been there to recover salvageable parts from a fellow IL-76 (EW-78826) that received damage, but survived a missile attack.

2005 – Airline Transport Flight 982, an Ilyushin IL-76 (ER-IBR ) crashes into the water beyond Mawanza Airport in Tanzania. Using a takeoff configuration for a weight almost 10 tons lighter than its actual weight, the aircraft is unable to maintain its climb and the pilots are unable to react appropriately in time. All 8 on-board are killed.

2004 – First prototype Boeing X-50A Dragonfly Canard Rotor/Wing crashes at the United States Army Yuma Proving Ground, Yuma, Arizona, during its third hover test flight. It had made its first flight on 4 December 2003.

2003 – AH-64D Apache 85-25407 from C Company, 1st Battalion, 227th Aviation Regiment, 4th BCT, 1st Cavalry Division shot down during attack on Republican Guard; two pilots taken prisoner.[6] Helicopter was supposedly destroyed by Coalition forces, but Iraqi TV showed an AH-64 being taken to Baghdad on a low loader.[7]

1994 – Aeroflot Flight 593, an Airbus A310, crashes into a wooded hillside in Siberia. All 75 passengers and crew are killed.

1994 – Green Ramp Disaster: A mid-air collision between a Lockheed C-130 Hercules and an General Dynamics F-16D Fighting Falcon causes a ground crash at Pope Air Force Base, North Carolina. The F-16 hits and destroys a Lockheed C-141 Starlifter parked on the tarmac, and flaming wreckage careens into paratroopers preparing for a practice drop, killing 24 and injuring many more. The C-130 landed safely.

1991 – An Aeroflot Antonov An-24 (CCCP-46472) overruns the runway while landing at Navoi Airport in Uzbekistan. The aircraft slams into a pile of concrete slabs and catches fire, killing 34 of the 63 aboard.

1982 – A United States Air Force McDonnell-Douglas F-4E Phantom II of the 4th Tactical Fighter Wing crashed near Nellis AFB, both crew killed.

1982 – An Eglin Air Force Base General Dynamics F-16B Block 5 Fighting Falcon, 78-0112, of the 4485th Test Squadron, crashed into a green at Rocky Bayou Country Club, near Niceville, Florida. The pilot had just finished a test bombing run over Eglin's Range 52 and lost power in the engine. The pilot was able to get the aircraft to an altitude of about 3,000 feet and a speed of between 285 mph and 345 mph before the engine gave out. The pilot, and a weapons officer decided to eject, expecting the F-16 to continue north and crash into a wooded area of the Eglin reservation. According to officer in charge of Eglin's safety office, the dual ejection caused the plane to roll to the right and slam into the golf course's sixth green, narrowly missing several homes. The two airmen landed on the 18th green and didn't suffer any major injuries. Air Force investigators were able to later watch the entire crash because a chase plane that had been photographing the test mission caught the crash on film. When F-16 experts recreated the accident they discovered a sequence of control switch moves that would restart an F-16 engine. The procedures were added to F-16 instruction manuals.

1967 – Worst ground aviation accident of Vietnam War occurs at Da Nang Air Base, South Vietnam when traffic controller clears USMC Grumman A-6A Intruder, BuNo 152608, of VMA(AW)-242, MAG-11, for takeoff but also clears USAF Lockheed C-141A-LM Starlifter, 65-9407, of the 62nd Military Airlift Wing, McChord AFB, Washington, to cross runway. A-6 crew sees Starlifter at last moment, veers off runway to try to avoid it, but port wing slices through C-141's nose, which immediately catches fire, load of 72 acetylene gas cylinders ignite and causes tremendous explosion, only loadmaster escaping through rear hatch. Intruder overturns, skids on down runway on back, but both crew, Capt. Frederick Cone and Capt. Doug Wilson, survive, crawl out of smashed canopy after jet stops. Some of ordnance load of 16 X 500 lb. bombs and six rocket packs go off in ensuing fire. Military Airlift Command crew killed are Capt. Harold Leland Hale, Capt. Leroy Edward Leonard, Capt. Max Paul Starkel, S/Sgt. Alanson Garland Bynum, and S/Sgt. Alfred Funck. This is the first of two C-141s lost during the conflict, and one of only three strategic airlifters written off during the Vietnam War.

1966 – First prototype LTV YA-7A-1-CV Corsair II, BuNo 152580, 'A-7A' on tail, rolls inverted while landing at Naval Air Facility China Lake, California, and crashes on golf course ~3 miles SE of approach end of the primary runway. Vought test pilot John Omvig was doing touch and goes and on the last one the A-7 began to roll and he ejected just before it rolled 90 degrees, with extremely low parachute deployment. The cause was pilot error when the hydraulic system was switched off (flight test configuration) and loss of control resulted. He will later be killed in the XC-142A, 62-5921, crash on 10 May 1967 near Dallas, Texas.

1965 – Gemini 3, the US’s first two-man spaceflight, launches. The spacecraft makes three orbits over 4 hours before splashing down in the Atlantic Ocean not far from Turks and Caicos. Astronauts Virgil Grissom and John Young are reprimanded upon returning home after one of them brings a corned beef sandwich aboard, as the crumbs could have damaged flight systems.

1965- A Royal Canadian Air Force Canadair CP-107 crashes into the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Puerto Rico during a night exercise, killing all 15 on board. 1942 – AVM E. W. Stedman named Director General of Air Research.

1964 – Armstrong Whitworth Argosy C.1, XP413, of 105 Squadron, deployed to RAF Khormaksar, Aden, ditches in the Aden harbour whilst on finals to the easterly runway at Khormaksar, when, during crew training, the number four (starboard outer) engine was shut down for practice. Due to confusion in the cockpit, the crew managed to shut down both starboard engines without feathering either and the Argosy comes down with remarkably little damage, settling on its undercarriage in about 5 feet (1.5 m.) of water. Hauled onto dry land, it is eventually shipped back to the UK by boat, refurbished by Hawker Siddeley, and returned to duty.

1961 – Valentin V. Bondarenko, a Soviet Air Force pilot selected for cosmonaut training in 1960, dies while training in a ground-based spacecraft simulator. Fire broke out in the capsule, which was filled with a pure oxygen atmosphere, and he was unable to escape, a grim parallel to the 1967 Apollo 1 accident.

1951 – A United States Air Force Douglas C-124 Globemaster II, 49-244, c/n 43173, of the 2d Strategic Support Squadron, Strategic Air Command, en route from Gander, Newfoundland to RAF Mildenhall, missing over the Atlantic Ocean; wreckage found near Ireland. 53 went MIA, including Gen. Paul T. Cullen and his command staff, en route to his headquarters of the newly activated 7th Air Division, SAC, at South Ruislip, London, England. Cullen had been deputy commander of Barksdale Air Force Base, Louisiana. The crew and passengers survived the water landing and were observed in the water, but none were recovered after an extensive search. It has been speculated that they may have been captured by Soviet naval forces.

1946 – The Royal Netherlands Navy commissions its first aircraft carrier, the escort carrier HNLMS Karel Doorman (QH1). Formerly the British carrier HMS Nairana, she will serve until replaced in 1948 by the fleet carrier HNLMS Karel Doorman (R81).

1943 – A Republic P-47C-2-RE Thunderbolt, 41-6292, of the 328th Fighter Squadron, 352d Fighter Group, crashes into Barnard Hall at Hofstra College shortly after take-off from Mitchel Field, Long Island, New York, early this date, hitting the west side near the roof, setting the building afire, police announced. Pilot Earl D. Hayward died. The blaze was brought under control within 45 minutes by firemen from Hempstead, East Hempstead and Uniondale. No students were in the vicinity at the time. The Eastern Defense Command in New York City announced that the pilot was killed. He had taken off from Mitchel Field on a training mission shortly before the crash.

1942 – North American B-25B Mitchell, 40-2291, piloted by 1st Lt. James P. Bates, crashes on take-off from Auxiliary Field No. 3, Eglin Field, Florida, during training for the planned Doolittle Raid on Japan. This aircraft did not participate in the mission. Bates deployed with the Raiders aboard the USS Hornet but did not fly the mission.

1942 – (23-26) Fliegerkorps II dedicates 326 aircraft to the destruction of the four Allied cargo ships that have arrived at Malta, sinking three of them and a destroyer and damaging one of them.

1942 – (23-26) Fliegerkorps II begins attacks on Malta’s submarine base, sinking the British submarine HMS P39 and damaging two other submarines. From this time, submarines at Malta submerge all day while in port.

1932 – Flying a Bleriot 110, French aviators Lucien Bossoutrot and Maurice Rossi take off for a record closed-circuit distance of 6,587.442 miles at Oran, Algeria.

1921 – In an all-night training flight, a U.S. Navy free balloon, A-5597, launches from NAS Pensacola, Florida, with five crew and drifts over the Gulf of Mexico. Two messages received by pigeon indicate it first is 20 miles from St. Andrews Bay, then that all ballast had been dropped and that it was at 100 feet and descending. On 8 April 1921, a fishing vessel finds the balloon floating on the sea, with the gondola three and a half fathoms under water. Nothing is ever found of Chief Quartermaster E. W. Wilkinson, enlisted men R. V. Wyland, E. L. Kershaw, and J. P. Elder, and Marine Corps member W. H. Tressey.

1921 – Lawrence Sperry flew and landed the first airplane at the U. S. Capitol, in a Sperry Messenger.

1921 – US Army Lieutenant Arthur Hamilton sets a new world record when he jumps by parachute from 24,400 feet (7,400 m).

1908 – French industrialist Lazare Weiller signs a contract with the Wrights establishing a Wright airplane company in France, on condition that the brothers make two demonstration flights covering 50 km (31.1 miles) within an hour’s flying time. They will receive FF500, 000 and half the founders’ share

1903 – The Wright brothers file an application for a patent for an airplane based on the design of their Glider No. 3.

2011 – A French fighter aircraft destroys a Libyan government Soko G-2 Galeb military trainer aircraft on the ground just after it had landed at a Libyan base following a flight in which it violated the no-fly zone over Libya.[1] French aircraft also bomb the Al Jufra Air Base.[2][3]

1986 – Combat breaks out in the Gulf of Sidra between Libyan military forces and an American naval force which includes the aircraft carriers USS Saratoga (CV-60), USS America (CV-66), and USS Coral Sea (CV-43). Two Libyan MiG-23 fighters engage in a dogfight with two U. S. Navy F-14 Tomcats, although none of the aircraft involved fire at each other; Libyan forces ashore fire surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) at American aircraft, scoring no hits; and U. S. Navy aircraft attack Libyan radars, SAM sites, and warships, sinking two vessels.

1975 – A Royal Air Force Handley Page Victor K.1A, XH618, of 57 Squadron collided with a RAF Hawker Siddeley Buccaneer XV156 during a simulated refuelling. Buccaneer hit the Victor's tailplane causing the aircraft to crash into the sea 95 miles E of Sunderland, County Durham.

1971 – As a result of votes in the U. S. Senate and House of Representatives, Boeing cancels its supersonic transport (Boeing SST). The elaborate, full-size mock-up is eventually sold to a promotion specialist who puts it in a Florida amusement park.

1944 – RAF tailgunner Flight Sergeant Nicholas Alkemade jumps without a parachute from a burning Avro Lancaster B Mk. II, 'S for Sugar', of No. 115 Squadron RAF, E of Schmallenberg, flying at 18,000 ft (5,500 m) during a raid on Germany. Alkemade falls into a forest and is decelerated by fall through tree branches before landing in deep snowdrift. Alkemade survives fall with severe bruising and a sprained leg. Captured and unable to show them his parachute, his captors disbelieve his story and suspect him of being a spy until he shows them bruising and indentation in snowdrift. Alkemade finishes war in Stalag Luft III and dies in 1987.

1944 – A U. S. Army Air Forces B-17G Flying Fortress of the 422nd Bomb Squadron, 305th Bombardment Group (Heavy), crashes at Yielden, England, on takeoff from RAF Chelveston, killing all 10 men aboard the bomber and 11 people on the ground.

1916 – Five Royal Naval Air Service Avro 504 s of No. 1 Squadron bomb the Geramn submarine depot at Hoboken in Antwerp, Belgium, starting a fire in the shipyard that destroys two German submarines.

1909 – The Wright brothers found a school in the USA to train pilots for exhibition flights. The first pupil is a childhood friend, Walter Brookins, 21, from Dayton. Because Dayton’s weather is not good enough, Orville Wright sets up the school at Montgomery, Alabama, where winds are generally light.

2010 – A Chilean Army MD Helicopters 530F suffered an engine failure shortly after takeoff after disembarking a passenger and crashed. The helicopter was on a mission in the region that was badly damaged by the last earthquake. All 4 crew member were taken to the hospital, three of them with serious injuries.

2010 – A Royal Malaysian Air Force Pilatus PC-7 crashed during an airshow near local university campus. Pilot bailed at low altitude but was killed.

2009 – The September 2007 approval by the U. S. Department of Transportation for American, Northwest, Continental, Delta, and US Airways to begin service between and Beijing, China, or Shanghai, China, goes into effect.

2009 – An USAF Lockheed Martin F-22A Block 10 Raptor, 91-4008, Raptor 07, of the 411th Flight Test Squadron, 412th Test Wing, crashes in the marshy flat land 6 miles N of Harper Dry Lake near Edwards Air Force Base, California, during a weapons integration flight test mission. The single-seater goes down about 1000 hrs. (1300 hrs. ET) for unknown reasons, the officials said. The fighter was on a test mission when it crashed about 35 miles (56 km) NE of Edwards AFB, where it was stationed, the Air Force said in a news release. KWF was David Cooley, 49, a 21-year Air Force veteran who joined Lockheed Martin Corp., the plane's principal contractor, in 2003. Cooley, of Palmdale, was pronounced dead at Victor Valley Community Hospital in Victorville, California. An Air Force investigation finds that the accident occurred after the pilot lost consciousness in a high-gravity maneuver. The reports stated that during the third test of the mission the pilot appeared to have been subjected to increased physiological stress and his lack of awareness delayed a recovery maneuver. At 7,486 ft MSL, the pilot initiated ejection outside of the seat design envelope and immediately sustained fatal injuries.

2008 – Saudi Arabian Airlines Flight 810, a Boeing 747-300 (TF-ARS) on wet-lease from Air Atlanta Icelandic catches fire on landing at Dhaka-Zia International Airport in Bangladesh. Though all 326 aboard escaped with their lives, the aircraft would be written off.

2000 – A Uralex Antonov An-32 (D2-MAJ) crashes after experiencing a brake failure on takeoff after trying to avoid a hole on the runway. The aircraft loses control, hits another hole and breaks into two pieces. Of the 33 occupants, 3 are killed.

1993 – The first woman Concorde pilot makes her first flight as First Officer of the daily supersonic London-New York route. British-born, Barbara Harmer, is one of only 17 co-pilots in the British Airways Concorde fleet.

1993 – A US Navy Grumman E-2C Hawkeye, BuNo 161549, c/n A082, of VAW-124, crashes into the Ionian Sea off of southern Italy0] shortly after being waved off from the USS Theodore Roosevelt due to a fouled deck. The aircraft had been monitoring nightly drops of humanitarian aid to Muslims in eastern Bosnia, and was returning to the carrier when it was sent into the holding pattern. The radar plane then disappeared ~one mile from the ship without any radio call and no cause was determined for the loss. KWF were Lt. Cmdr. Jon A. Rystrom, Lt. William R. Dyer, Lt. Robert A. Forwalder, Lt. Patrick J. Ardaiz, and Lt. John A. Messier.

1983 – As a consequence of the March 4 and 5 incidents, the American government bans use of American airspace by Cubana de Aviación for 14 days.

1981 – Piedmont Airlines announces an order for eight more Boeing 737 s with options for 20 more, to begin delivery in 1982. Order will makes their 737 fleet the largest in the world.

1960 – The first NASA flight in the X-15 hypersonic research program gets under way when test pilot Joseph A. Walker makes the first of his flights in this aircraft.

1958 – The first Canadian-Built supersonic aircraft, the Avro Canada CF-105 Arrow made its first test flight in Malton, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The long-range, all- weather, super-sonic interceptor was to be an eventual replacement for the CF 100. This Aircraft was considered decades ahead of its time and far superior to any aircraft in the interceptor role. Unfortunately, the economic situation in Canada resulted in the disbandment of the Arrow program. Many still consider the loss to be Canada’s most devastating blow to the Aircraft industry.

1958 – A Braniff Airlines Douglas DC-7 (N5904) departs Miami, Florida, and tries to return to the airport after an fire on the #3 engine but did not make it. Of the 24 on board, 9 perish in a marsh.

1956 – First prototype Martin XB-51, 46-0685, crashes in sand dunes near Biggs AFB, El Paso, Texas, killing both crew. Pilot was Maj. James O. Rudolph, 36, who was dragged from the crash site with severe burns and conveyed to Brook Army Hospital at San Antonio where he succumbed to his injuries 16 April 1956. The flight engineer was S/Sgt. Wilbur R. Savage, 28, of Rte. 3, Dawsonville, Georgia. The aircraft was staging to Eglin AFB, Florida at the time of its crash for filming of scenes for the motion picture Toward the Unknown. After stopping for refuelling, the bomber began its take-off run at 1030 hrs., but smashed through the fence at the end of the southwest runway and then began to disintegrate, spreading wreckage along a 250-yard trail. There was some initial confusion about the aircraft type as rescuers found the "Gilbert XF-120" name applied to the airframe for the film on the wreckage.

1950 – A Devlet Hava Yollari Douglas DC-3 (TC-BAL) catches fire while on approach to Ankara, Turkey. The crew became incapacitated and the aircraft fell short of the runway, resulting in the deaths of all 15 occupants.

1950 – A Mandated Air Lines Lockheed 414-08 Hudson IVA crashes into a house while trying to make an emergency landing back at Law-Nadzab Airport in Papua New Guinea. After experiencing a failure of engine #1, and then had to execute a go-around because of traffic on the runway, and subsequently hit telephone wires. There was 1 survivor among the 3 aboard.

1948 – 1948 Tinker Air Force Base tornadoes: Two large tornadoes strike Tinker Air Force Base, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, damaging or destroying a large number of aircraft including at least two Douglas C-54 Skymasters, a Douglas C-47 Skytrain, and many Boeing B-29 Superfortresses stored from World War II.

1945 – Japanese aircraft make their last raid on Iwo Jima. U. S. Army Air Forces P-61 Black Widow night fighters based on the island shoot down several of the Japanese planes and drive off the rest.

1945 – The Japanese high command issues an alert for Operation Ten-Go, a concentrated air attack against amphibious forces preparing to invade Okinawa.

1944 – A British twin-engined aircraft lands on an aircraft carrier for the first time when Lieutenant Commander E. M. Brown lands a navalized de Havilland Mosquito VI on the British carrier HMS Indefatigable.

1939 – Ongoing ceasefire negotiations between Nationalist and Republican officials which include a Nationalist demand that all Spanish Republican Air Force aircraft fly to Nationalist airfields to surrender on this day are broken off when Republican aircraft do not surrender. A major motivation for the Nationalist demand is to prevent Republican leaders from fleeing Spain by air; six Republican aircraft carry officials and refugees from central Spain to France on this day.

1928 – Jim Lovell, American astronaut was born. James “Jim” Arthur Lovell, Jr., is most famous as the commander of Apollo 13, which suffered an explosion en route to the Moon but was brought back safely to Earth by the efforts of the crew and mission control.

1926 – Willie Messerschmitt, a graduate of Munich Technical High School and already an experienced designer of light aircraft and sailplanes, forms the Messerschmitt Flugzeugbau G. m. b. H.

1924 – Royal Air Force (flag pictured) officers McLaren, Plenderleith, and Andrews set off in an attempted round-the-world flight in a Vickers Vulture II. Their attempt will ultimately fail in Siberia in early August.

1922 – One of the first small commercial transport aircraft built upon experience from passenger flying and the requirements of airline operators, makes its first flight from Edgware, near London. The 10-seat passenger D. H. 34, with a top speed of 128 mph and a cruising speed of 105 mph has a range of 365 miles. Daimler Hire used six D. H.34′s and Instone used four, while one was sold to Dobrolet, the Russian airline. When Imperial Airways was formed in 1924 it took over seven D. H.34 s and used them over the next two years before deciding to re-equip with larger aircraft.

2011 – France reports that at least five Libyan government Soko G-2 Galeb fighter planes and two Libyan government Mil Mi-24 (NATO reporting name "Hind") attack helicopters preparing to attack rebel forces in the Az Zintan and Misrata regions have been shot down in the last 24 hours.[2]

2009 – Arrow Air Cargo Flight 431, a McDonnell Douglas DC-1030 F, suffers a major failure of the #2 (tail-mounted) engine shortly after take-off from Eduardo Gomes International Airport, Brazil. 12 houses and several cars were damaged by falling debris. The aircraft subsequently makes a safe landing at El Dorado International Airport, Colombia.

2006 – Hooters Air (operated by Pace Airlines) ends service to both Orlando and Wilkes-Barre/Scranton.

2005 – West Caribbean Airways Flight 9955, crashes a few hundred feet from the end of the runway after departure from Providencia-El Embrujo Airport in Colombia, killing 9 of the 14 aboard. The Let 410 Turbolet’s #1 engine failed near V1 speed, and the aircraft impacts the ground at a 40-degree inverted angle after failing to climb.

2003 – AirTran Flight 356 experiences electrical problems while on approach to La Guardia Airport’s runway 4, and a strong burning smell in both the cockpit and cabin is detected. The aircraft declares emergency on touchdown, and all of the 83 people on the Boeing 717-200 (N957AT) survive, though 10 were injured during the evacuation.

2003 – UH-1N Huey 160444 of HMLA-269 makes hard landing in sandstorm and is written off.

2001 – A Merpati Nusantara Airlines Fokker F-27 (PK-MFL) crashes on landing during a training flight after completing 8 touch-and-go’s throughout the day. The aircraft mysteriously banks to the right and struck the ground moments from touching down.

2001 – Comair pilots go on strike for 89-days before finally agreeing to a new contract.

1996 – Pace Airlines is founded after approval from the FAA and the US Dept. of Transportation. Their operation would last until they suspend operations on September 11, 2009.

1991 – Singapore Airlines Flight 117, an Airbus A310, is hijacked by Pakistani militants en route to Singapore, where, upon landing, it is stormed by Singapore Special Operations forces. All of the hijackers are killed in the operation, with no fatalities amongst the passengers and crew.

1989 – Austrian Airlines begins international flights for the first time in almost two decades on a flight from Vienna to New York’s JFK on an Airbus A310 (OE-LAA), aptly named “New York”.

1981 – The keel of the first aircraft carrier designed as such to be built in Italy, Giuseppe Garibaldi, is laid by Italcantieri in Monfalcone.

1950 – A North American B-25 Mitchell that was converted to an executive transport configuration and being flown around the country to promote possible sales, breaks-up in midair, presumably due to severe weather conditions. All 6 people on the aircraft perish.

1950 – ARAF Short S.25 Sunderland GR.5, SZ513, sank at RAF Seletar after a bomb explosion while being prepared for a sortie, two killed.

1949 – The Sunkist Lady flies an endurance record of 1,008 hours and 2 min or just a couple of minutes over 42 days. The flight was the duo’s fourth attempt at breaking the 726-hour record set in 1939 by Long Beach pilots Wes Carroll and Clyde Scliepper. Their first three attempts failed because of mechanical problems. The plan was for the Lady to travel from Fullerton to Miami and back. The Lady would then stay aloft over Southern California until the record had been broken. At airports along the route, the ground crew would land, board Willys Jeepsters, and race along the runway while the Sunkist Lady passed low overhead. Three-gallon cans of gasoline and food would then be passed up to the pilots.

1947 – Prototype Convair XB-36 Peacemaker, 42-13570, on test flight out of Fort Worth Army Air Field, Texas, with two test pilots, seven Convair flight test crew, three US Army Air Force observers, and two employees of Curtiss-Wright to run electronic tests on troubling propeller vibrations on board, suffers explosion of hydraulic retracting strut as the starboard main gear comes up. Huge 9 foot, 2 inch main tire swings back down as dead weight, smashes rear of number 4 engine nacelle, rupturing fuel and hydraulic lines. Twelve on board bail out, suffering various injuries from gusting wind conditions, but after six hours of flight to burn off fuel, pilots Beryl A. Erickson and Gus S. Green successfully land the bomber at Fort Worth with no additional damage, although they have no hydraulics. Repaired, with a redesigned strut, the prototype returns to flight testing two months later.

1945 – The United States declares the Iwo Jima operation “completed. ”

1945 – The British Pacific Fleet conducts its first combat operation, launching aistrikes against Japanese airfields on Miyako-jima.

1944 – During a U. S. air strike on Ponape, the Japanese get fighters aloft for the first time in the Central Pacific Area in six weeks, but almost all of them are shot down.

1942 – The fifth Republic P-47B Thunderbolt, 41-5899, is lost when pilot George Burrell is forced to bail out after fabric-covered tail surfaces balloon and rupture. Pilot dies when his chute has insufficient time to open. Future P-47s have enlarged all-metal surfaces.

1942 – The first Bell XP-39E Airacobra (of three), 41-19501, with lengthened fuselage to accommodate the Allison V-1710-E9 engine, and used for determining handling qualities, armament tests, and maneuvers, crashes on its 36th test flight during a spin test out of Wright Field, Ohio.

1941 – The United States Army redesignates the Northwest Air District as the Second Air Force, the Southeast Air District as the Third Air Force, and the Southwest Air District as the Fourth Air Force. They are responsible for the northwestern, southeastern, and southwestern United States, respectively.

1938 – Arthur Clouston and Victor Ricketts land their D. H. 88 Comet Australian Anniversary at Gravesend in Kent, England to complete a 26,500-mile flight from England to New Zealand and back in a record 10 days 21 hours.

1936 – Adolf II, Prince of Schaumburg-Lippe, and his wife are killed in a plane crash at Zumpango, Mexico.

1934 – Piloted by John Lankester Parker and with three passengers on board, the first landplane derivative of the Short Kent flying boat takes off to the air for the first time. Named Scylla (G-ACJJ), the big biplane is followed by Scyrinx (G-ACJK) for the busy Imperial Airways routes into continental Europe.

1922 – One of the first small commercial transport aircraft built upon experience from passenger flying and the requirements of airline operators, makes its first flight from Edgware, near London. The 10-seat passenger de Havilland DH.34, with a top speed of 128 mph and a cruising speed of 105 mph has a range of 365 miles.

1917 – Ex-Royal Flying Corps pilot J. B. Fitzsimmons is killed while engaging in some low level aerobatics in a high wind in the sole Nestler Scout (no serial) when the fabric began stripping from the wings. Fitzsimmons crashes into a hangar and the airframe is wrecked. No further development work takes place on the design.

1999 – 1999 F-117A shoot-down: A USAF Lockheed F-117A Nighthawk, on a bombing mission over Serbia, was shot down by the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia unit using a SA-3 Goa. The pilot ejected and the F-117A crashed in hostile territory.

1984 – British Airways inaugurates a Concorde service from London to Miami twice weekly. The service operates through Washington-Dulles, necessitating a 50-minute stopover. The overall trip lasts 6 hours 35 min, a saving approximately 2.5 hours over the direct flight by subsonic airliners. The round-trip fare is quoted a £2,509.

1978 – A USN Grumman F-14A-70-GR Tomcat, BuNo 158995, 'NK 106', of VF-1, crashes and catapults across scrub grass to come to rest against a concrete highway divider on CA-163, the Cabrillo Freeway, on approach to NAS Miramar, San Diego, California, exploding in flames. Both crew members eject seconds before impact; one fatality, no civilian deaths.

1977 – In the Tenerife airport disaster, KLM Flight 4805 and Pan Am Flight 1736, both Boeing 747s, collide on the runway in Los Rodeos Airport; 583 of 644 people on board both aircraft are killed in the worst accident in the history of commercial aviation.

1969 – Mariner 7, one of two robotic probes sent to inspect Mars’ atmosphere and ice caps, launches.

1968 – While on a routine training flight out of Chkalovsky Air Base, Kosmonaut Yuri Gagarin and flight instructor Vladimir Seryogin (Seregin) die in a Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15UTI, c/n 612739, callsign 625, crash near the town of Kirzhach. Gagarin and Seryogin were buried in the walls of the Kremlin on Red Square. It is not certain what caused the crash, but a 1986 inquest suggests that the turbulence from a Su-11 'Fishpot-C' interceptor using its afterburners may have caused Gagarin's plane to go out of control. Russian documents declassified in March 2003 showed that the KGB had conducted their own investigation of the accident, in addition to one government and two military investigations. The KGB's report dismissed various conspiracy theories, instead indicating that the actions of air base personnel contributed to the crash. The report states that an air traffic controller provided Gagarin with outdated weather information, and that when Gagarin flew, conditions had deteriorated significantly. Ground crew also left external fuel tanks attached to the aircraft. His planned flight activities needed clear weather and no outboard tanks. The investigation concluded that Gagarin's aircraft entered a spin, either due to a bird strike or because of a sudden move to avoid another aircraft. Because of the out-of-date weather report, the crew believed their altitude to be higher than it actually was, and could not properly react to bring the MiG-15 out of its spin.

1967 – A Douglas A-4 Skyhawk of VA-72 out of NAS Cecil Field, Florida, crashes into a wooded area W of Lake City, Florida after pilot Lt. Cmdr. Robert W. McKay, 34, ejects from the crippled jet. "He suffered no apparent injuries", a Navy spokesman said. "He was picked up by the Highway Patrol and will be returned to Cecil Field on a Navy helicopter."

1963 – North American T-28A-NI Trojan, 52-1242, c/n 189-57, converted to first prototype RA-28 (a proposed turboprop combat version for use in SE Asia), later redesignated North American YAT-28E. To Air Force Special Evaluation Center at Eglin AFB, Florida, for tests. Deficiency in tailfin area (tail unit separated in flight) led to its entering a flat spin and crashing whilst on its 14th test flight, killing North American Aviation pilot George Hoskins when he is unable to bail out due to a jammed canopy.

1962 – A Cubana de Aviacion Ilyushin IL-14 (CU-T819) crashes into the sea about a mile from Santiago, Cuba, killing all 22 aboard.

1958 – A United States Air Force Douglas C-124C Globemaster II, 52-0981, collides in midair with a USAF Fairchild C-119C Flying Boxcar, 49-0195, over Bridgeport, Texas, United States, killing all 15 on the Globemaster and all three on the Flying Boxcar.

1954 – USAF Capt. Berry H. Young, 9th Bomb Squadron, 7th Bomb Wing, lands his Convair B-36H Peacemaker safely at Carswell AFB, Texas, with all three reciprocating engines on the starboard wing inoperative, the outboard jets completely disabled, and the landing flaps inoperative. These problems are further compounded when two engines windmill, without cockpit control, and the landing gear has to be lowered by emergency procedures. This incident becomes known as the "Miracle Landing". In acknowledgement of this feat, the entire crew is awarded the Carswell Crew of the Month Award, and later receives a personal commendation from General Curtis E. LeMay, Commander-In-Chief, Strategic Air Command.

1951 – In the 1951 Ringway Dakota accident, a Douglas C-47 A-75-DL Dakota 3 cargo aircraft operated by Air Transport Charter and en route to Nutts Corner Airport, County Antrim, Northern Ireland, shortly after take-off following the aircraft's failure to gain height, killing two of the three crew and two of the three passengers.

1946 – An air agreement is signed by France and the US giving Air France the right to serve the cities of Boston, New York, Washington, D. C., and Chicago. Air France has a fleet of 375 aircraft as of December 31, 2004. It has over 1,800 daily flights. Between 2003 and 2004, 43,7 million passengers flew on flights operated by Air France to 189 destinations in 84 countries.

1945 – RAF Consolidated LB-30 Liberator II, AL504, first Mk. II accepted by the British, converted to VIP transport for the Prime Minister, named "Commando". Lost over the Atlantic Ocean between the Azores and Ottawa, Canada. The Prime Minister was not on board.

1945 – In support of the upcoming U. S. invasion of Okinawa, Twentieth Air Force B-29 s strike airfields and an aircraft factory on Kyushu and lay naval mines in Shimonoseki Strait.

1944 – The Arctic convoy JW 58 departs Loch Ewe, Scotland, bound for the Kola Inlet in the Soviet Union. The British aircraft carriers HMS Activity and HMS Tracker escort JW 58 and the return convoy RA 58, which reaches Loch Ewe on April 14. During their cruise, their aircraft sink or contribute to sinking two German submarines, attack three more, and shoot down six German aircraft without the loss of a merchant ship.

1943 – The British escort aircraft carrier HMS Dasher suffers a massive accidental internal explosion and sinks off the Isle of Arran in the Firth of Clyde, killing 379. There are 149 survivors.

1936 – First flight of the Fokker D.XXI fighter, a low-wing monoplane with a steel tube fuselage covered in large part by fabric, designed for use by the Royal Netherlands East Indies Army Air Force.

1927 – Young American airmail pilot Charles A. Lindbergh registers his entry in the Raymond Orteig challenge for the first man to cross the Atlantic Ocean solo. The challenge and a $25,000 prize, has been issued in 1920, but no one has so far been successful in making the flight.

1918 – Lt. Alan A. McLeod was awarded the Victoria Cross for action this day flying a reconnaissance aircraft with 2 Squadron RFC.

1918 – Attacked by German planes, bomber pilot Alan McLeod is strafed from below: Three bullets strike him and others puncture his fuel tank, setting his plane on fire. Lt McLeod climbs onto the lower left wing and steers the plane to a crash landing between the front lines. He pulls his gunner out of the wreck into a fox hole, from which they are rescued.

1907 – Romanian Trajan Vuia begins tests of his airplane, newly fitted with steering surfaces. He makes a short flight of 33 feet in Paris, France.

1970 – A United States Navy F-4 J Phantom II fighter of Fighter Squadron 142 (VF-142) shoots down a North Vietnamese MiG-21 fighter. It is the only American air-to-air kill in the Vietnam War between September 1968 and 971.

1961 – ČSA Flight 511, an Ilyushin Il-18, crashed in Gräfenberg, West Germany. All 52 passengers and crew on board were killed.

1961 – The Royal Canadian Air Force took a delivery of the first CF-104 Starfighter. Capable of flying at over 1,400 miles per hour; it carried nuclear bombs, the CF-104 fulfilled Canada’s NATO commitment in Europe as a nuclear strike aircraft.

1956 – A Boeing B-47B-35-BW Stratojet, 51-2175, of the 3520th FTW, McConnell AFB, Kansas, suffers explosion in bomb bay fuel tank and sheds its wings over East Wichita, Kansas, crashing four miles (6 km) NE of the city, killing three crew. The office of information services at McConnell Air Force Base, said the explosion occurred after takeoff, probably at about 2,000 feet (610 m) altitude. Lt. Maurice Boyack, pilot of a Navy Lockheed P2V Neptune bomber, out of Naval Air Station Hutchinson, Kansas, said the explosion occurred in a climbing turn. He flew his bomber to a point where he could see the wings rip off the B-47. He said it appeared there was a fire in the midsection, followed by the explosion. Fire fighters battled the blaze at the crash scene for more than an hour. The plane crashed within 1,000 feet (300 m) of two large suburban houses. Officials at McConnell AFB identified the pilot and instructor as Capt. William C. Craggs of Wichita. He is survived by his widow and two sons. The students were Lt. Col. William H. Dames, 39, of Oconomowoc, Wisconsin whose wife and two sons are reported to be living in Milwaukee; and 1st Lt. John C. Leysath, 24, of North, South Carolina.

1941 – During the Battle of Cape Matapan in the Mediterranean Sea, Swordfish and Albacore torpedo bombers from the British aircraft carrier HMS Formidable and land-based Fleet Air Arm Swordfish from Maleme, Crete, damage the Italian battleship Vittorio Veneto and heavy cruiser Pola, slowing Pola. In the predawn darkness of the next morning, British battleships catch up to the damaged Pola and the four ships accompanying her – The heavy cruisers Zara and Fiume and two destroyers – And sink all five ships with gunfire.

1936 – National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) commences operational use of the newly constructed 8-ft.-high speed tunnel (8-Foot HST) at the Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory, Langley, Virginia. Built as a companion to the full scale tunnel capable of simulated speeds of up to 118 mph, the new facility can test models and components to 577 mph (Mach 0.75).

1933 – The City of Liverpool disaster was the fatal accident of an Armstrong Whitworth Argosy II aeroplane flown by British airline Imperial Airways named City of Liverpool on 28 March 1933 near Dixmude, northern Belgium after an onboard fire. At the time it was the deadliest accident in the history of British civil aviation. It has been suggested that this was the first airliner ever lost to sabotage, and in the immediate aftermath suspicion centred on one passenger, Dr. Albert Voss, who seemingly jumped from the aircraft before it crashed.

1931 – Boeing Air Transport, National Air Transport, Varney Airlines and Pacific Air Transport combine as United Air Lines, providing coast-to-coast passenger service and mail service. It takes 27 hours to fly the route, one way.

1919 – Leslie Irving made the first US free-fall parachute jump at McCook Field, Dayton, Ohio from an Air Service DH-9. The parachute was designed by Floyd Smith (the pilot).

1918 – Sole prototype of the Breguet LE (Laboratoire Eiffel), a single-seat fighter monoplane, crashes on its second flight, out of Villacoublay, France, when it dives into the ground at full-throttle, killing pilot Jean Sauclière. Further development suspended.

1913 – Lts. Thomas DeWitt Milling and William C. Sherman set a two-man duration and distance record of four hours and 22 min for 220 miles from Texas City, Texas to San Antonio.

1843 – William Samuel Henson (1805-1888) receives the patent and publishes in London his design for an Aerial Steam Carriage. This is the first reasoned, formulated, and detailed design for a propeller-driven aircraft.

1985 – Two Canadian Forces Lockheed CC-130H Hercules, 130330 and 130331, both of 435 Squadron, crashed after having a mid-air collision over CFB Namao, near Edmonton, Alberta. This is the only dual Hercules mid-air.

1942 – HMS Eagle makes the third delivery of Spitfires to Malta, flying off seven.

1942 – The production of Spitrie aircraft reached an all-time peak in one day, 134 aircraft.

1942 – (Overnight) In an experiment to see whether a first wave of bombers could start a conflagration in a city center that would guide later waves of bombers to the city during an area bombing attack, 234 British bombers attack Lübeck, Germany. The experiment succeeds, with the center of Lübeck largely destroyed and over 300 people killed.

1939 – Entered Service: Curtiss YP-37 with the United States Army Air Corps

1912 – Hanna Reitsch, German test pilot, was born (d. 1979). Reitsch was a famous female German test pilot. Several of her later international gliding records are still standing in 2008. Reitsch was born in Hirschberg, Silesia. The daughter of an ophthalmologist, she studied to become a medical doctor and in 1932 began her aviation career. She was a test pilot on the Junkers Ju 87 Stuka and Dornier Do 17 projects and was one of the few pilots to fly the Focke-Achgelis Fa 61, the first fully controllable helicopter.

1858 – Two men – Brown and Dean – make the first balloon flight in Australia in a hydrogen balloon named the Australasian.

2007 – An OH-58D Kiowa makes a hard landing south of Kirkuk, injuring both crewmembers, and becomes entangled in overhanging wires before hitting the ground.[8] Reports had varied whether the crash was due to a mechanical[9] or electronic failure[10] and whether it is shot down.[11]

1999 – (1-20) The hot-air balloon Breitling Orbiter 3, with pilots Bertrand Piccard and Brian Jones, begins the first non-stop, round-the-world balloon flight. They will complete the flight on March 19, setting a new distance record for any type of aircraft of 40,804 km (25,360 miles). Taking a total time of 19 days, 21 hours and 47 min.

1989 – Canadian Space Agency (CSA) was formed, taking over the National Research Council as Canada’s primary space agency. In 1993, the CSA established its headquarters in St. Hubert, Quebec.

1976 – Lt. Col. Michael A. Love, 37, chief USAF test pilot on the Martin-Marietta X-24B program, is killed in the crash of an F-4C Phantom II on a dry lakebed at Edwards AFB, California, after take-off on a proficiency flight when his ejection seat malfunctions. Navigator Maj. E. B. Underwood, Jr. ejects before the crash and is hospitalized in stable condition. After serving in the lifting body program as chase pilot on various Northrop M2 and X-24A flights, Love made his first X-24B flight on 4 October 1973, and piloted the plane to its fastest speed—better than 1,860 kph—before terminating the program with a hard-surface runway landing at Edwards on 20 August 1975.

1969 – The U. S. Army’s 101st Airborne Division (Airmobile) begins Operation Massachusetts Striker, a helicopter-borne assault against North Vietnamese forces in South Vietnam’s A Shau Valley. It will continue until May 8

1966 – Venera 3 Soviet space probe crashes on Venus becoming the first spacecraft to land on another planet’s surface.

1965 – The combat debut of the Republic F-105 Thunderchief takes place, as U. S. Air Force F-105D aircraft based at Da Nang, South Vietnam, begin bombing missions over North Vietnam.

1962 – American Airlines Flight 1, a Boeing 707, crashes in Jamaica Bay, Queens, New York due to a rudder malfunction, killing all 95 passengers and crew on board.

1962 – Los Angeles Airways sets up the world’s first commercial service using turbine-powered, multi-engine helicopters, the Sikorsky S-621L, which could accommodate up to 28 passengers.

1946 – Two Silverplate Boeing B-29 Superfortresses written off in taxi accident at Kirtland Army Air Field, New Mexico. Pilot of Boeing B-29-60-MO Superfortress, 44-86473, of the 509th Composite Group, assigned to Roswell AAF, New Mexico, attempts to taxi without energizing the hydraulic brake system, cannot stop bomber which collides with Boeing B-29-36-MO, 44-27296, "Some Punkins", also of the 509th. "Some Punkins" stricken in August 1946 and destroyed in fire-fighting training. 44-86473 dropped from inventory, April 1946, after salvage.

1945 – First vertical take-off manned rocket flight test, launched from the Lager Heuberg military training area near Stetten am kalten Markt, of Bachem Ba 349 Natter, 'M23', a vertically launched bomber interceptor, fails when Oberleutnant Lothar Sieber, 22, a volunteer, is killed as rocket-powered aircraft reaches ~1,650 feet, cockpit canopy detaches, Ba 349 noses over onto back, then falls from ~4,800 feet, killing pilot. No cause for crash determined but it was thought that improperly latched canopy may have knocked Siebert unconscious. Three successful manned flights subsequently flown and a group of the fighters readied for intercept mission, but advancing U.S. 8th Army armoured units overrun launch site before Natters can be used

1945 – Two Bell P-59A Airacomets of the 29th Fighter Squadron collide in mid-air over the Grey Butte Army Airfield during an anti-aircraft tracking exercise. 2nd Lt. Robert W. Murdock (pilot of #44-22620), and 2nd Lt. Howard L. Wilson (pilot of #44-22626) are killed in the collision.

1943 – Since January 14, Royal Air Force Bomber Command has launched major raids on Wilhelmshaven four times, Berlin, Cologne, and Hamburg three times each, and Bremen, Düsseldorf, and Nuremberg once each, as well as on Milan and Turin.

1943 – (Overnight) Royal Air Force Bomber Command flies the last raid of its early 1943 campaign against German submarines and their bases in France. It has attacked Lorient nine times and Brest once since the start of the campaign on January 14, but found German submarine pens impervious to its bombs. The raids have caused much damage to the French cities and their residents.

1942 – The U. S. Navy sinks a German submarine for the first time in World War II when a Patrol Squadron 82 (VP-82) PBO-1 Hudson piloted by Ensign William Tepuni USNR sinks U-656 off Cape Race, Newfoundland.

1939 – Clarence Decatur C. D. Howe opened the first TransCanada Air Lines transcontinental passenger service from Montreal to Vancouver.

1938 – Western Air Command with Headquarters at Vancouver, BC, was formed to control all RCAF units in British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba.

1938 – The 1938 Yosemite TWA crash; a Douglas DC-2, disappears on a flight from San Francisco to Winslow, Arizona; the aircraft is found three months later on a mountain in Yosemite National Park; all 9 on board die.

1933 – U. S. Air Commerce Regulations are amended to increase the flying time required for a pilot’s license from 10 hours to 50 hours.

1932 – Entered Service: Berliner-Joyce P-16 with United States Army Air Corps

1932 – The 20-months-old son of aviator Charles Lindbergh has been kidnapped from the family’s home in Hopewell, New Jersey.

1928 – The British aircraft carrier HMS Courgaeous enters service as the world’s first aircraft carrier with transverse arresting gear.

1928 – An airmail route between France and Chile is opened with a fast sea link between Dakar, Senegal and Natal, Brazil.

1924 – Deke Slayton, American astronaut, was born (d. 1993). was one of the original “Mercury Seven” NASA astronauts. Initially grounded by a heart condition, he would serve as NASA’s Director of Flight Crew Operations. Deke Slayton was responsible for all crew assignments at NASA from November 1963 until March 1972, when he was granted medical clearance to fly as docking module pilot of the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project. At the time of the flight, he became the oldest person to fly into space.

1912 – Capt. Albert Berry makes the first parachute descent from a powered airplane in America when he jumps from a Benoist aircraft that is being flown by the company pilot, Anthony Jannus. The aircraft is flying at a height of 1,500 ft. over Jefferson Barracks in St. Louis, Missouri, and Berry uses a static line parachute.

1911 – The first four Royal Navy pilots, Lieutenants Charles R. Samson, R. Gregory, and Arthur M. Longmore of the Royal Navy and Lieutenant E. L. Gerrard of the Royal Marine Light Infantry, report for flight training at Eastchurch airfield, using borrowed Short S.27 aircraft.

2010 – A Grumman E-2 Hawkeye aircraft of the United States Navy from Carrier Airborne Early Warning Squadron 121 crashed at approximately 1400 hrs. local time in Arabian Sea. It was returning to its ship, the USS Eisenhower, after conducting operations in support of Operation Enduring Freedom when it experienced mechanical malfunctions and the crew performed a controlled bailout. The pilot was killed. Navy 5th Fleet officials declined to speculate on the cause of the crash, but the Naval Safety Center’s Web site listed it as “an engine oil leak.”

2009 – A Polish Air Force PZL M28 (Antonov An-28TD Bryza 1TD) crashes into trees on final approach to an airfield near Gdynia, Poland. The aircraft was a routine training flight simulating landing on one engine resulting to 4 crew fatalities.

2005 – An Lockheed MC-130H Combat Talon II, USAF 87-0127, c/n 5118, Wrath 11, of the 7th Special Operations Squadron, 352d Special Operations Group, RAF Mildenhall, departs Tirana-Rinas Airport, Albania, for a night training mission to work on terrain-following and avoidance skills, airdrops and landing using night-vision goggles. The aircraft was flying 300 feet (91 m) above the mountainous terrain when it was approaching a ridge. The airplane was not able to clear the ridge and stalled as the crew attempted to climb away. The aircraft struck the ridge, destroying the aircraft and killing all nine crew members on board.

1986 – Mexicana Flight 940, a Boeing 727, crashes into high ground near Santiago Maravatío, Mexico. All 167 passengers and crew are killed in the worst ever air disaster involving the Boeing 727.

1979 – The British government announces development and production costs for the Concorde supersonic airliner since November 29, 1962, when agreement was reached with France to design and built the aircraft. Through December 31, 1978, the French government spent a total of £920 million whereas the British spent £898 million. The total cost of £1.818 billion would increase by a further £163 million, before government funding ceased.

1975 – Western Airlines Flight 470, a Boeing 737, overruns the runway at Casper/Natrona County International Airport and crashes into a ditch; all 99 on board survive.

1975 – A specially modified Royal Canadian Air Force de Havilland CC-115 (DMC-5 Buffalo) makes its first flight carrying an inflatable air-cushion landing system beneath the fuselage.

1974 – British Airways commences operations after BOAC and British European Airways merge to create the new airline.

1972 – In response to the North Vietnamese “Easter Offensive” against South Vietnam which began on March 30, the United States begins a series of deployments code-named “Constant Guard, ” in which a large number of U. S. Air Force and U. S. Marine Corps squadrons return to bases in South Vietnam and Thailand and the U. S. Navy aircraft carrier presence at Yankee Station in the Gulf of Tonkin increases from two on March 30 to six by late spring.

1972 – Twenty minutes after take-off from McCoy AFB, Florida, a USAF Boeing B-52D-80-BO Stratofortress, 56-0625, of the 306th Bomb Wing, suffers an in-flight fire in engine number seven which spreads to starboard wing; attempts emergency landing at McCoy, crashes one quarter mile short of runway, killing six on board and one civilian on the ground, injuring eight civilians on the ground, destroys four houses.

1970 – Japan Airlines Flight 351, a Boeing 727, is hijacked to North Korea by a Japanese Red Army faction.hop and cardinal Stephen Fumio Hamao; Japanese pop singer Mita Akira; and Dr. Shigeaki Hinohara, who would become one of the world’s longest-serving physicians and educators.

1948 – One of two Curtiss SB2C-5 Helldivers, BuNo 83414, en route from Naval Air Station Tillamook, Oregon, to San Diego, California, crashes in woods near Rockaway Beach, Oregon, killing pilot Robert W. Smedley. Wreckage rediscovered by loggers on 10 March 2010.

1944 – A flying boat carrying Admiral Mineichi Koga, Commander-in-Chief of the Imperial Japanese Navy‘s Combined Fleet, disappears after taking off from Babelthuap; no wreckage or bodies are ever found. A second flying boat carrying Rear Admiral Shigeru Fukudome of Koga’s staff making the same trip crashes in a storm; Fukudome spends two weeks in the hands of natives on Cebu before being rescued.

1943 – Since January 1, Royal Air Force Bomber Command has flown 12,760 sorties and lost 348 bombers, a 2.7 percent loss rate. German night fighters have shot down 201 of the bombers.

1942 – An Imperial Japanese Navy task force centered around the aircraft carriers Akagi, Ryūjō, Hiryū, Sōryū, Shōkaku, and Zuikaku begins a very destructive raid against British forces in the Indian Ocean.

1942 – Since March 1, the Luftwaffe’s Fliegerkorps II has flown 4,927 sorties against Malta. In addition to attacks on airfields and other facilities, they have sunk two British destroyers and a British submarine, damaged two other submarines, and badly damaged the light cruiser HMS Penelope.

1942 – (Overnight) The Royal Air Force places the new 4,000-lb (1,814-kg) high-capacity “Cookie” bomb – Its largest bomb to date and its first “blockbuster” bomb – Into service in a raid on Emden, Germany. The RAF will drop 68,000 “Cookie” bombs during World War II.

1937 – A Spanish Nationalist ground offensive begins against the Basques, supported by 80 German aircraft based at Vitoria-Gasteiz and 70 Spanish Nationalist and Italian aircraft based elsewhere in northern Spain. Opposing them are 20 to 30 Basque aircraft. On the first day, German Junkers Ju 52 s conduct the first terror bombing and strafing of an undefended town in Europe, killing 248 people in Durango.

1936 – During the Battle of Maychew, Italian aircraft bomb Ethiopian troops heavily, helping to blunt a major Ethiopian attack.

1912 – The world’s first hydroplane competitions, held in Monaco, were a runaway success for Farman biplanes. Belgian Jules Fisher is the overall winner. He is one of only two non-French pilots of the eight starters and flies a Henry Farman machine.

1903 – Richard Pearse is reputed to have made a powered flight in a heavier-than-air craft, a monoplane of his own construction, that crash lands on a hedge. This date is computed from circumstantial evidence of eyewitnesses as the flight was not well documented at the time. The machine made a flight claimed to be around 150 feet (45 m) on his farm at Upper Waitohi, near Timaru in south Canterbury, New Zealand.